#221 – Automatic
Posted on October 22, 2012 at 12:00 am by Chris
Chapter: Comic
“Ahh… which side has the UPC symbol! What kind of apple is this!! Unexpected item?! I just scanned it! Why were you not expecting it?!”
Tags: anxiety, checkout, grocery store
I love those machines so much. I’m finally free of the yoke of dealing with the cashier who insists on re-sorting my already sorted groceries into her order, who makes uncomfortable small talk, or who keeps putting things in plastic bags even though my reusables are already right there!
But then the machine has a weight wrong or something, and I have to wait for a new cashier. This one, of the “talking to a pal, I’ll get to you someday” variety. Bleh.
hmm at my walmart I am usually the pal talking to the Self check cashier, but for me they typically will leave me midsentence if a customer needs help… I also agree I prefer self checkout because it cuts down on awkward social interactions
I like using these, but I don’t like it when a cashier comes running over to “help” me when I’m not having any problem — they see an older woman and assume I’m some kind of technophobic geezer who doesn’t understand newfangled contraptions.
We used to have a bank of these at our Wal-Mart, but our small town had just enough boneheads to ruin the whole idea, and it’s all regular check-outs again. Either they couldn’t wrap their heads around the simple concept, or were using them to walk out of the store with stuff they didn’t scan.
Or, more likely, people noticed how godawfully inefficient it is to have to stop and wait for a sales clerk to come running over because you put the item on the conveyor belt at the wrong time, or you’re buying one of the thousands of little packet-type items the store sells that aren’t heavy enough to trigger the weight sensor, or because the computer insists on referring to the CVVS on your card as a “customer code” or some other description that nothing else on the planet uses, or…
Giving people a technology that’s useful in theory but whose implementation was apparently given five seconds of thought at the bar after work is kind of like giving them half a kitten. It’s not half as good as a whole kitten, it’s a bloody mess. >.>
I have been behind people with the train of carts, and they decide to use the self-checks instead of the reg’lar ones. Then they go through the usual monkey business. So taking them out really isn’t that big a loss around here.
The performance anxiety of scanning your items is probably a good stepping stone to human interaction in general. The idea of the weight sensor, however, was born in the too clever, well intentioned bowels of tyrannical hell.
At least you can try every phone number you know until you find someone with the grocery store club card instead of trying one or two, then mumbling to the cashier “sorry, I don’t remember which number is on my account.”