In the back corner is the main deli area, selling sliced meats and cheeses much like you'd see at a grocery store back home, though I'm sure the products are higher quality than what my local Safeway sells these days! Even the squared-off glass cases are reminiscent of what Safeway has used in a few stores in recent years. The deli has one of those overly-complicated electronic queuing systems that are so popular in Italy for some reason (what happened to just lining up?) -- it looks like you have to enter your name into that kiosk in the foreground and then wait for it to appear on the screen overhead. I had to use a similar system at the post office to mail my postcards despite the place being almost empty (it assigns you to a specific employee there) and Trenitalia has this sort of thing at their ticket offices too (thankfully, I was able to just buy train tickets from the machines or on my phone rather than dealing with an actual person). (By the way, I've been home for a month and no sign yet of those postcards -- I wonder if they'll ever turn up!) (And on the third parenthetical side note in a row, which might be a record even for me, a lot of those systems are made by Solari, the same company that used to make those split-flap destination signs.)
Ha, are you suggesting that Primo Taglio aren't the most authentic Italian meats around?!
ReplyDeleteGiven my experiences in Italy, I don't think the Italians are the best at queuing etiquette! Then again, I'm not sure if we're any better. We might actually be worse, really, but I can understand why the Italians might try to force queuing upon the public. That said, a lot of supermarkets used to put 'take a number' ticket systems in their service departments back in the day, but it seemed that nobody took those numbers very seriously.
Ha! I have to imagine Italians (especially the kind that shop at Eataly) would be less than impressed with Primo Taglio, and even more upset when they heard how a lot of English speakers pronounced it! At least if my experience with Pagliacci, a pizza place in Seattle that I often ate at when I lived on campus, tells me anything, "gli" is a rather difficult sound for Americans to pronounce correctly!
DeleteYeah, you're probably right about that. While I wasn't particularly thrilled with the very late arrival and early departure of my Turkish flights, it was nice to avoid Italian airport lines! Those simple "take a number" systems used to be common in Italy, but it seems like pretty much everyone has been sold on complicated electronic systems these days.