Self-serve counters

Technology is a great thing, when it’s been thought out properly. I love techie stuff, all of it. Cool phones, shiny lights, buttons everywhere, obviously built to attract the male of the species. Kind of like crows and magpies, come to think of it. Hmmm, I don’t like where this is going...

Anyway, I really want to talk about the new “self-serve” check-out counters every store seems to have installed.

When they first arrived, I thought they were a pretty good idea – cheaper for manpower and faster for the folks that only buy a few items. Seeing how I buy groceries for three teenagers, it didn’t seem likely that I would ever get to use one of these counters at a grocery store for the foreseeable future.

One day I got lucky. Only three jugs of milk, eggs, butter, salad, spaghetti, cookies (our mixer is broken), pasta sauce, a cooked chicken, bananas, apples and tortillas. Yep, really lucky. As I walked up to the checkouts, one of the self-serve counters was available. Like a hummingbird to sugar water, I zipped over to the ridiculously small counter to try that baby out. The screen said to press start, but seeing how I had the pasta sauce in my hand, I heard a BEEP and a voice said “Please put the item in the bag”. Wow – really efficient! And a pretty nice voice as well!

Then it said “Please scan next item”. As I was grabbing the butter, the voice then asked “Have you scanned your card yet?” So I put the butter down (on the scanner) heard the BEEP and fumbled for my wallet to get the card out.

“Please put the item in the bag”. So I hurriedly put my wallet back and grabbed the butter off the scanner and put it in the bag and then heard “Please scan next item” before I could get my hand back. She was getting a little pushy all of a sudden.

I scanned the next item, trying to be polite to the voice, bagging the item before she could say anything, almost. I think I heard the “Please...” part but it was quickly replaced by the “Have you scanned your card yet?” “No, I haven’t, you haven’t given me a chance yet!” I said, perhaps a bit too loudly.

I tried to get ahead by scanning things as quickly as possible. Didn’t care if a jar of sauce landed on the eggs, just fired them into the plastic. I got to the bananas and realized there wasn’t a barcode on them. Aaack! She was asking for my card again!

As I grabbed the bananas off the scanner to look for something to appease the evil lady in the machine, a red light on top of the machine started to blink and the screen lit up and the voice said “PLEASE WAIT FOR AN ATTENDANT” at many more decibels than was required.

I was waiting for a large steel cage to drop from the ceiling and the SWAT team to appear from behind the magazine counter. It was like being called to the Principal’s office during lunch period at elementary school. It was like being caught by my darling wife raiding the fridge just before guests arrive. Now I know what a deer in the headlights feels like.

Thankfully, it was a very nice lady from the store that came up behind me. With a wave of her magic card, the red light stopped blinking and the evil mechanical voice stopped for a moment. A couple of quick taps to the screen, the bananas were scanned through and placed in the bag.

I hit the “Pay Now” button, scanned my card before the machine could ask for a fourth time and keyed in my PIN as fast as I could. Anything to keep her quiet!

There is a conspiracy here - I do believe these scanners were programmed by women. It’s the only way they would be able to get us out of the stores quickly and without playing with the machines for hours and backing up the express lanes...