As soon as I pause, she swoops in to assist. I always pause. I need a moment to count items in my head, or figure out how to enter my rewards card, or wonder who that was who said ‘Hi’ in aisle five. This is self-checkout at my favorite grocery store, the small one up the street. She reaches over my shoulder and pokes the screen. Her voice, possibly friendly and helpful seems admonishing. World weary, annoyed. “No, select a half dozen donuts and then add two more. You’ll save a dollar.”
Twenty years ago, as my company’s network administrator and database manager, I led the pack. When people had computer problems, they came to me. This predates the explosion of smartphones, Facebook and digital music. I avoided these trends, disdained them. I began to revere the Luddites, those antitechnology textile workers from the early nineteenth century who smashed the machinery destined to steal their jobs. I didn’t worry about my job. I feared for society. Nothing good could come from staring at a screen. I railed against technology every chance I got.
My avoidance caused a developmental delay. I didn’t join Facebook until 2016. Got my first smartphone a year later. Didn’t start streaming music until 2022. I’m way behind, still catching up. When I ask my kids how to mute a group chat, they roll their eyes and grab my phone. Just like Mary Ann, there’s an undercurrent of hostility beneath their willingness to help.
Last night, Susan, Sophie and I went to our other grocery store, the one with the self-checkout machines that weigh each item as you bag it. “Please place your item on the bagging shelf. Please rescan your item and place it on the bagging shelf.” It’s a tight little space, that self-checkout area. Not enough room for the ten checkout kiosks and the carts people bring with them. The bagging shelves can hold two, maybe three bags. I think the original intent was convenience for people with a half-dozen items. Now, there’s only one live cashier. Everyone else pulls into the self-checkout lane with laden carts.
We couldn’t do it. We didn’t want to cram three more people into self-checkout and do battle with the machine (Please place your item on the bagging shelf before scanning the next identical item) as a crowd formed behind us clamoring for their turn. We lined up behind three carts at the one register with a real human being. When we were one cart from the front, the woman in front of us pulled out a huge wad of cash. I picked up a cat magazine and thumbed through the pages. It was more articles than photos giving it an air of sophistication. I wondered who buys this magazine. I wondered what those articles were about. I looked up again and the woman was still counting her money.
She reminded me of those older women five years ago who still wrote checks for their groceries. The cashier would finish scanning items, finish bagging groceries, and then say, “That’ll be forty-five-sixteen.” As if surprised that she was expected to pay for her groceries, the woman would just then open her enormous pocketbook and rifle it looking for her checkbook. She wrote her check and then, instead of vacating the line so the next shopper could checkout, she carefully completed her check register, including the math—carry the one—so she was prepared for her next transaction six days later. The woman in line in front of us counted her cash one more time.
When we finally got our turn, Dave, the cashier, a guy about my age, seemed out of his element. He tentatively scanned the items using only one hand. Lift, scan, drop. His other hand sat idle on the metal countertop as if necessary to keep his balance. He dropped each item a few inches beyond the scanner. Sophie repeatedly stretched, reaching past me waiting at the credit card machine, to grab the item and pass it to Susan who bagged groceries at the end of the lane. Dave had a conveyer belt beyond his scanner, but he used it sparingly, in brief spurts that didn’t seem related to what he had just scanned. I contemplated passing items to Sophie to make it easier for her to pass them to Susan, but the absurdity of requiring four people to check out groceries kept me from doing this.
Entering produce codes derailed Dave. Every item: “Is this dill? What is this? Kale?” He stared at the laminated chart next to his register trying to find kale on the alphabetized list. Whenever I see an older man struggling as a cashier at a grocery store, I immediately think he must have recently lost his office job. I appreciate the store giving the guy a chance to stumble through an extended learning curve even as they know the part time high school students they normally hire pick up the intricacies of the job in a day or two.
I try not to get annoyed with the Daves of the world. There but for the grace of god go I. I’m now the guy who can’t back out of his parking space without looking over both shoulders four hundred times. I’m the guy who asks for help finding a jar of yeast even though I’ve been staring at the correct shelf for fifteen minutes. We already know what happens to me at the self-checkout machine. I think most people go through life believing in their competence. It’s amazing how quickly this can erode. I know if I took Dave’s place as a cashier, people would look at me with frustration and pity. And I know how angry they would be when I charged them for eight donuts instead of a half dozen plus two.
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Previously Published on jefftcann.com and is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
