Remember a few years back when George Bush the first marveled at a bar code scanner during a just-us’ns campaign stop at a Maine grocery store? Most of us chuckled at this because Bush, who apparently hadn’t bought his own groceries since Sputnik, was dismayed at such whiz-bang technology.
Imagine what George would do if he could see us now, taking that next bold step and scanning our own groceries.
Self-serve checkout systems are all the rage. Literally. They just installed two at my favorite grocery store and the air around those things is bluer than Aunt Hettie’s hair after a fresh mink rinse.
I tried one of these gizmos and we just didn’t get along. Perhaps it’s because I have the mechanical savvy of a box of Ring-Dings, but I had to keep rescanning stuff. Plus, I couldn’t resist talking back to the thing.
“Three seventy-nine,” the soothing female voice inside the gizmo said.
“For cereal? Are you kidding me? I can remember when this stuff was a buck and a half AND you got a Batman rubber stamp set in every box.”
“Two ninety-nine. Eighty-nine cents. Thirty-three cents.”
She’s not much of a conversationalist, but I guess that’s not her job.
Frankly, I’m a little worried about how smart these machines are. They’re impossible to hoo-doo because they check the weight of your groceries against the weight they’re supposed to be, automatically alerting a cashier to any discrepancy.
I’m terrified that I’ll accidentally scan myself and the discrepancy between my correct body weight and my actual weight will cause the thing to alert Jenny Craig.
I have to wonder why this weighing skill can’t extend to the baggers, who routinely insist on putting an eight-pound chuck roast and a couple of bottles of wine in the one flimsy plastic bag, then place a lemon and one garlic bulb in another bag all to themselves. What’s with that?
With the self-serve checkout, you have to bag your own groceries. This, like pumping our own gas and being able to make funnel cakes at home, is just another giant step backward.
Seems to me that if you’re going to scan and bag your groceries, you should be eligible for employee medical and dental benefits. What else is there left to do? Restock the canned goods? Smoke outside on break and glare at the customers?
Grocery stores like the U-Scan system because they estimate that one cashier can oversee four self-serve checkouts. Not if most of the customers are like me. I had to have the woman in the Wizard of Oz booth come down four separate times to scan my unscannables.
Stores say the system’s biggest bonus to the customer is avoiding long lines at the regular checkouts. This is especially true at peak times, like five P.M. when grocery store managers across the land routinely close half the registers so everybody can sit in the office, drink box wine, and laugh at us while we sputter and fume.
I’m sticking to the old ways. How else will I get to read Weekly World Globe Enquirer? Some traditions are sacred, you know.