The lines to checkout were interminable, thrusting from
their defined confines through high traffic areas and into the aisles. “Saturday morning shopping,” he
sighed. He looked down to his
shopping cart, empty save a box of frosted strawberry pop tarts and whitening toothpaste. He came shopping this morning for the
express purpose of getting only one of these necessities and it wasn’t the
toothpaste. That had been an
impulse buy. “Buy,” he
harrumphed. “Well, not yet.”
He studied the lines carefully, scanning each cashier,
analyzing their manner and affect to discover who was the most motivated, the
trait he found translated into cashiers who worked quickly and were the least
likely to have a long friendly conversation with someone ahead of him in line. The length of the line was merely a
secondary consideration.
His eyes alit upon Register 3, manned by a woman in her
mid-forties with bushy eyebrows and a droopy jowl. She wasted no smiles for the customers, but her hands moved
at a harried pace as she scanned boxes of spaghetti and aspirin for the old man
at her counter. Just as he settled
at the back of the line, the placard designating “Self Checkout 5” flickered to
life.
It seemed as if the entire store arrived to the same
conclusion simultaneously, as a wave of people and produce, carts and canned
goods crashed onto the open register.
Through luck, or sheer force of will, he somehow managed a favorable
position, next in line behind a blonde woman, smacking her gum as she slowly
and deliberately scanned her items.
“Self Checkout.”
He hated Self Checkout. It
wasn’t the scanning of items that troubled him. He was a cashier in another life, when he was 16 and
optimistic. No, he was as fast and
efficient as any cashier working there today. Most troubling was the unwritten rule of the Self Checkout, the
physical self-assessment, the judging of one's own physical attributes.
As the blonde continued scanning his items, he looked past her at the two-way mirror.
Behind that mirror, he knew, the store manager poured over accounts and
supply orders. Ostensibly, the
mirror provided the manager purview of his domain. In actuality, the mirror being situated by these registers belied
the true intent of the supermarket: a tool to aid customers in their Self
Checkout.
He didn’t know why people preferred this to real
cashiers. Maybe they’ve developed
the ability to lie to themselves. Even
the term “Self Checkout” was demoralizing, as by its very nomenclature, one had
to completely disregard personality.
It was, as its title announced, a pure physical assessment and it always
depressed him.
The sound of the blonde’s receipt being printed stirred him
from his reverie. As she spun one more time in the mirror, he steeled his
resolve and resigned himself to his fate.
At least he could drown his sorrows in Pop Tarts when he got home.
