When people talk about how much better things were in the good old days, it is often some memory wrapped in warm mush and gossamer strands. Modern cars are far safer and our telecommunications networks are more robust. From vaccines to medical breakthroughs, our odds have never been better.
Self-checkouts are not things that have improved. There was a reason they once never existed. Every store has a corral of these worthless machines instead of paying real workers.
People I have a weekly relationship with, based on pleasantries and the price of Triscuits. Initially, it wasn’t a big deal. Grabbing some forgotten item, it was speedy to scan it and bolt.
I liked not being held up behind people chatting about the price of Triscuits. But now? Now is not good. Now is awful.
I’m getting funnelled. Yesterday as I approached checkout land like small prey eyeing up a communal watering hole on the savannah, I tried to choose an action that would cause me the least grief. But there was one checkout open.
One. The choice was to park my cart in the long line behind the sole (no doubt weary) open checkout worker or get jammed into the one-way pen with my cart and my bad mood. After profiling my fellow checker-outers (Cart loaded high? Eighty-seven kinds of produce? Three kids fighting? Sorry, all a hard pass), I pushed my half-full cart into the self-checkout.
They do not make room for carts to do this, but they also do not make it possible to avoid it. I plunked my bags on the tiny pl.