Thank You for Your Complicity



I am at the grocery store picking up fancy cheese and good crackers to take to a dinner, plus a new stick of deodorant so that I don’t get turfed out of said dinner. Only three items to pay for, so I head to the express lane. A sign on the near side of the belt says, 

            Sorry, please use another lane.

 I look around, wondering if perhaps I have arrived in the middle of a shift-change and the mighty-and-brave cashier charged with triumph in the speedy lane is on her way. I see no evidence of this possibility coming true, so I step into the closest line in a regular lane. The store is not that busy; the line I have chosen is not terribly long, and nobody in it has a full cart so I am not frothing-annoyed, but I do keep looking over at the express lane just in case. One or two people step into line behind me. A minute passes and one of the head cashiers comes toward us:

“Anyone paying cash or credit and not buying alcohol, I can take you over here,” she says. 

I assume that “over here,” refers to the express line since she’s standing right beside it so I accept the invitation and blissfully step toward her.

                          I am a fool. 

                              I am. 

  I think foolish thoughts, and I do foolish things. 


She leads me to the nearest self-checkout station–like you would a cow into a squeeze chute.

               I hate self-checkout stations. 

                          All of them.

                         Everywhere. 

                   With my all-of-me.

Why? First of all, the cold voice, smarmy and programmed, reeking of the psychological intimation, 

          Idiot human, how little you matter.

Second of all, and mostly, I want a human experience when I shop, and I get that here when I have a cashier. I know most of them and I like them. Plus, I often get into conversations with other people in line. The experience is pleasant. I also find it distasteful to think that I am bagging my own groceries, handling the payment on a machine that is reducing the data on all of my purchases to algorithms so that I may take my place as meaningless host; predictable, unremarkable–repeatedly offered purchase suggestions on the card loyalty site which I must always hurry to load because hell is missing out, right? And to think that I might eventually pay less if all of the cashiers were replaced with these robot check-out machines is laughable. I’m not that much of a fool.

Yet, here I am. I groan out loud, like a child,

 “I didn’t know you were going to bring me here.”  

She mistakes my displeasure for a blinkered inability to use the check-out machine. 

“Oh, it’s okay. I’ll do it for you,” she offers.

I sigh audibly and surrender my items onto the scanning platform–I am committed now. I take out my wallet. “Oh, it’s not that I can’t manage this on my own,” I explain. “I’m sure it’s easy.” I find my loyalty card, look at the screen and grok the whole process as, yes, straightforward, but I still hate it. The woman sees that I don’t need her technical support here and turns to leave.

“Wait. Don’t go,” I say with a tone of, you-got-me-into-this-you're-not-getting-away-so-easily. 

She stops and steps back beside me. “The thing is,” I explain, as the machine accepts me as a willing player in this mindless complicity of societal slaughter, “I’d rather have a human experience here.” I look at her while my data is being processed. “Tell me a joke,” I say.

 She laughs. “Oh, I don’t know any jokes. I can never remember any of the good ones,” she says. 

“I’m the same way,” I say. “’Drives me nuts!” She laughs again. “Being human is bonkers,” I add. 

With only three items to scan on the glass slab, my check-out process is quick. “You’re all done,” my kind task-minder announces. 

“I am, and thank you for adding humanness to this insanity,” I say, sincerely. I head towards the door. 

“Have a great evening,” she says. 

“You have a great evening too,” I say.

Yes, the machine took my data, but I did not let it take my soul.