Voice of Utah

If there's one thing more enjoyable than working late on a Sunday, it's remembering that you're supposed to stop at the grocery store on the way home.  Oh, well.  Get in, get the hell out.  Doesn't Albertson's say that?

Grab, grab, grab, check out.  Machine or human?  Cut out the middleman, as they say.

"Please scan your first item."

Beep!  One bag of catfood down, two inessentials to go.  See?  Who needs people?

"Unidentified item in bagging area.  Please remove."

Unidentified item?  Oh, the catfood.  It wants everything put into a plastic bag, apparently.  But even if I wanted to waste a plastic bag on a single item, this wouldn't fit anyway.  Guess I'll set it on the ground.

"Item removed from bagging area.  Please return."

But you said--oh, whatever.

"Unidentified item in bagging area.  Please remove."

But--fine.  Maybe if I put it on this--

"Item removed from bagging area.  Please return."

Okay, how about--

"Unidentified item in bagging area.  Please remove."

"Item removed from bagging area.  Please return."

"You piece of junk."  (Transcript not verbatim.)  Embarking on quest for self-checkout attendant, spying her in conversation with group of attentive males unlikely to end any time soon.  Sigh.  Sometimes the human element is really overrated.

Wrongly judged attendant immediately terminates chat with co-workers.  "You breathed on the machine," she guesses.

"Apparently.  It keeps saying--"

"Are your eyes two different colors?"

Um . . . "Partially."  Pointing at possessed checkout station, "This thing keeps saying--"

Stepping around attendant station to peer into objects of interest, "That's beautiful."

"That's nice of you to say.  A co-worker once asked if I'd been in an accident."  What have you been smoking?

"Oh, no way."  Squinting.  "It's like blue wasn't good enough and brown wasn't good enough.  Your parents must have both had dominant genes."

"That may be."  I have no clue.  "This thing keeps saying I have to remove the bag, but when I remove it, it accuses me of removing it."

Waving it off, "Oh, I cleared that already."

"Oh--thanks."

"You don't have to look these up.  You can just type in the code here."

"Oh--thanks.  That'll save me a lot of time in the future."

Smiles happily at having been helpful.  "Have a great night!"

Later, curious, typing "dominant gene" and "eye color" into search engine . . . sometimes the human element is really underrated.