Technology. Here to help.

And this week's edition of WTF? is brought to you courtesy of WH Smith. Clutching £30-worth of book tokens, I presented at the till the three new Torchwood books (buy one get one half price, which is somehow really annoying when there's three) and a Garth Nix book, marked half price.

Firstly it was apparently necessary for me to explain that yes, I did realise that it was two separate offers and I didn't think I was getting two lots of buy-one-get-one-half-price. Then there was trouble in trying to get the till to recognise that there was an offer involved at all. Then the Nix book scanned in at full price, necessitating much cross stabbing of the touch-screen to reduce it to the sticker price. Then all hell broke loose when I handed over my tokens. Yes, yes, I realise I will have to have my change in tokens, yes I am quite happy with this.

But oh no, foolish mortal, this will not be so easy! For reasons I am still not entirely sure of, it is apparently impossible for their till to simultaneously recognise the offers, the tokens, and the fact that it needs to provide tokens as change.

So she cancelled the whole transaction and started again. (All this time, I am getting filthy looks from the queue forming behind me). Eventually, I was asked if I could pay £3.96 and take one of my tokens back to use later instead. Not exactly ideal, when you consider the point of a book token gift is that you don't have to use your own money.

And, AND, what I've only just noticed looking at the receipt - because she cancelled and re-did the transaction, she didn't re-swipe my reward card, thus doing me out of £23.96-worth of points! Gah.