At the Checkout

/ Jeff Cann

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.”

I’ll call her Mary Ann. She wears a name tag, but I never thought to read it. I wrap up quickly and bolt. I try to get some space between me and this hovering helper. She’s short and gray, wrinkled. It embarrasses me being schooled in technology by a woman fifteen years my senior. I glance around to see if I know anyone.

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.

Photo by Evgeni Lazarev

21 thoughts on “At the Checkout”

  4. You’re striking right at some of my current core uncertainties and fears. I’m continually checking myself to see if I’m still up to speed as a professor. Do I still remember my students’ names? (Yes, until the week after the semester ends–then I immediately forget them.) Do I repeat myself in class? (I don’t think so, but if I did, would I be aware of it?) Do I forget words or lose track of my train of thought while standing in front of a class. (Well, yes, but I’ve always done that.) Am I still a competent and relevant professor? (Now, there’s the question.)

    I love the details you include in this post. Experiences that are familiar to those of us who shop for groceries, and those of us who worry . . .

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    • I think I’d make students wear nametags the whole semester. I’m awful with names. I worry about my brain all the time, but fortunately not at work. Not yet at least. Thank you, as always, for noticing the details.

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  5. see? … i didn’t know 1/2 dozen + 2 was even a thing! thanks for the “save” the next tme i self-check-out donuts. 🙂

    p.s. i’ve had a fever for the last four days, and had to go into the store to pick up my medicine (could not do it thru the drive-thru window for some reason). anyway, when i walked up to the register, i gave my full name and birthdate. when she was done doing what she needed to do with the register, she swung the screen in my direction and said, “enter you date of birth.” ugh … i was clearly sick (wearing a mask, winter coat, and mittens still on). i said, can’t you please do that for me, i’m sick, and don’t have the strength to take my mittens off. and she said… drumroll …. NO! So, i slide off my mittens and grab the little stick to write with (which i should not have been touching for next customer), and tried 3x to enter my DOB and signature. and the machine kept flashing: ERROR, ERROR, ERROR. i literally started to cry. real tears. and finally she swung the screen back around and did it for me (rolling her eyes, and scowling). if i thought i would live without the medicine, i would have walked and tried next day. i felt beat-up by the entire process. which is the very long way to say, “i get you!”

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    • Wow, that sounds traumatic. I’d probably blacklist that store for the rest of eternity even if it made my life hell trying to go somewhere else. There seems to be something pretty nasty going around here too, some people at work are out and are quite sick. Doesn’t sound like you had a very nice Christmas. Hopefully you’re getting some joy now.

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  6. There are a lot of Dave’s in my upscale suburban area. There are progressively fewer young people taking jobs in grocery stores and eateries. Not fast food per se but places like Mcalister’s and Panera. If it weren’t for the folks in their seventies, we would not have any checkers at these places. While they may be slow getting my order into the computer, I am thankful that they are there or these places would follow the path of many others in the area and either have only drive through or shut their doors.
    Happy New Year, Jeff.

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