So it should
come as no surprise that I do not like grocery stores with self-check-out.
Self-check-out
is a test, a test we are all set up to fail.
I know people who have gotten (paying) jobs at the grocery store and
guess what: they go through a week of
training! Yes! A whole week, and one of the most important
things they learn is “register.”
I myself have not
had any formal training. I have not
learned “register.” How can I be
expected to expertly scan my items and ring myself up with no training?
The answer
is: I can’t.
For this
reason, the grocery store I normally choose to go to has no self-check-out. It is a further drive and is more expensive than
that other grocery store, but worth it.
However, my favorite grocery store does not open until 9 AM, and it was
6 AM when I realized that we were out of toothpaste* (*that is a lie. I realized three days ago, but kept using the
kids’ bubblegum flavor toothpaste and could not take it for one more day. Yuck.).
I hopped in the car and drove to FoodFun.
The second I
walked in, I was spying for checkers.
There were none. I knew I was
going to have to scan my own stuff. I
broke into a cold sweat, and briefly considered calling The Husband at home for
moral support and advice, if only his number was programmed into my phone and I
knew how to use it.
I quickly
located the toothpaste, then suddenly remembered we were also out of People magazine
with Katie Holmes on the cover, so I grabbed one of those, too.
As I walked
up to the check-out lane, I gave one last attempt at finding a (paid) worker
who could help me.
“Hello?” I
called out, my voice echoing in the cavernous expansiveness that is FoodFun. “Hello?”
Thank God,
just at this precise moment, a clerk walked up to me.
“Did you
need some help, ma’am?”
“Yes,
please. I would like to buy these two
essentials.”
The checker glanced
at my items and smiled, most likely because she knew that the toothpaste was
not actually an essential.
“Ma’am, you
will have to use self-check-out. No
checkers are scheduled on until 8 AM.”
She shrugged, as if she had just said We are out of mint chocolate chip ice-cream
so you will have to try chocolate chip mint instead.
Same thing, no big deal.
Obviously,
she does not know me, because self-check-out is a big deal.
“Miss,” I
implored, as she began to walk away, “I cannot do self-check-out. I can do checker check out where I stand here
and make small talk with you about the weather and about whether Daryl Hannah
had plastic surgery (she has). I am
highly trained as a customer. I have
money, credit cards, and checks, and can pay for what I want to buy. However, I have zero training on register and
how to check people out, or how to check myself out. And I am not familiar with how to approve a
check if I decide to write a check.”
She
sighed. I could tell this was not the
first time she had heard this, even though it might be the first time
today.
“Honestly,
ma’am, it is not that hard. Here, I have
a video that you can watch that explains it.”
She turned to go find the video.
“Excuse me,
miss! I do not have time for a video!”
“Fine. Just read the sign above the check-out and it
will walk you through the steps.”
“Miss,” I
tried hard to bite my tongue but failed, “I am only buying two things. By the time you argued with me so much about
me checking myself out, you could have done it already.”
She rolled
her eyes, utterly exasperated at 6:10 AM .
“I am not allowed to do check out until 8. I am supposed to be unloading those
boxes.” She pointed to a pile of boxes
that looked slightly smaller than the Pyramids of Giza.
Then, without so much as a halfhearted Good luck, she walked away.
I stood
there with my toothpaste and magazine, staring at the screen. Focus, MOV, focus. How hard could it be? I located the bar code on the toothpaste and
swiped it against the glass counter. I
could see the red laser light blinking up at me.
“Before
swiping first item, please enter and verify your FoodFun bonus rewards card
number. If you do not have a FoodFun
card, press the purple key,” announced the self-check-out tape recording voice at
maximum volume so anyone around could verify that I was, in fact, an idiot.
I frantically searched for the purple key while the recording kept reprimanding me: “Press the purple key NOW. Press the purple key NOW.”
Then the
recording told me to swipe my first item, the toothpaste. I swiped it, and the recording instructed me
to “Put item in the bag.” Since it was only
toothpaste and a magazine, I was not really going to need a bag. So, I made the mistake of merely holding the
toothpaste.
“Put item in
the bag NOW,” demanded the recording, who was making my friend Christine’s bossy
car GPS seem infinitely warm and fuzzy by comparison. “NOW.
NOW.”
I really did
not want a bag. I gawked at the
self-check-out keyboard, seeking a “no bag” option.
Right then,
the clerk returned. “Is there a
problem? The self-check-out wants you to
put your item in the bag.” She put her
hands on her hips, like a third grade teacher.
I had seen this look before, mostly from my own third-grader.
“I don’t
need a bag,” I responded, trying to hide my frustration, “I just need the
toothpaste.”
“The
computer senses if the item is in the bag or not,” the checker explained to me
slowly, as if she were repeating some well-known universal truth like The sun comes up in the day, then the moon comes
up in the night, dummy. “If you do not
put the item in the bag, it will wait for you.
If you really do not want a bag, you can trick the self-check-out by
taking the items out of the bag at the end.”
I was not up
for tricking the computer, I just wanted to buy my damn toothpaste. At this point, my kids’ bubblegum flavor
toothpaste at home was not looking so bad after all. Besides, minty fresh breath is seriously overrated.
As the clerk
walked away yet again, I put the toothpaste in the bag, then tried to swipe the
bar code of the magazine. It read the
code twice by accident. Beep! Beep!
Now I was
really distraught. I did not want to pay
for two magazines. But there was no key
that said “Remove last item.” Maybe that was the first thing they went over in the video: how to fix mistakes when you do self-check-out. I
desperately did not want to call the store employee over again to further
embarrass myself and ask for her help, yet I did not want to pay for something
twice. I was having an internal moral
angsty dilemma, and I had not even brushed my teeth yet.
I did the
only thing I could: I found another magazine
for the same price and put it in the bag.
It was about tattoo artists, but at least it was the same price.
I swiped my
credit card.
“Credit or
debit?” bellowed the self-check-out recording.
I pressed
the credit button, and the machine ignored me. “Cash? Cash? CASH?”
I swiped my card again.
“Card not
recognized. Please remove card and try
again. Please. Try.
Again. Por favor prima el numéro
dos si habla español.”
This machine
was giving me an inferiority complex in multiple languages. I tried swiping my card yet again, then
waited patiently while it finally spit out my receipt (which I expected to jam the machine,
but thankfully did not). I looked at my watch and realized that the whole toothpaste-buying
extravaganza had taken 22 minutes.
As I walked
to the door with my (unwanted) bag with my three items, the same clerk
reappeared, blocking my exit.
“Ma’am, I
need to double-check your receipt to make sure you did it right and did not
steal anything.”
I handed her
the receipt while she looked in my bag, making me feel like a criminal. Then she had to go and say one more
thing:
“Can you please
fill out this survey online when you get home and give our service here at
FoodFun a 10, which is the highest rating?”
I told her I did not have time for any surveys. I was going to spend my valuable time doing important things, like getting tattoos.
MOV
