Self-Checkout Registers Are Proof that Civilization was Doomed Long Before ChatGPT
No, I mean it
We’re almost to the end of March, and looking back over what I’ve published this month I was shocked to see that I have written exactly one rant. This surprised me, given that ranting is as much a part of who I am as inserting a reference to Springsteen’s “Born to Run” in stories where it clearly does not belong. I set out to correct this egregious oversight immediately.
Somehow, though, I found myself stumped. I scanned the headlines to see which world event had set me off the most, which was clearly a mistake. Turn on the TV at any point during the day and you don’t just get bad news, you get end-of-the-world news. School shootings, Vladimir Putin’s worsening insanity in Ukraine, Trump already running for president again…it’s enough to make a person curl up in the fetal position with a gallon bottle of Wild Turkey.
I could always go back to some old favorites, but after two years of ranting about these, Greg Abbott is still governor of Texas, publishers are still “updating” books to make them more palatable to a society that is offended by literally everything, and concert tickets are still too expensive for anyone not named Elon, Beezos, or Jay-Z. It’s like screaming at a thunderstorm; it doesn’t change anything and the rain doesn’t care.
I could rant about Medium, but the algorithm-loving powers-that-be here are less concerned about what I (or anyone else) think than the aforementioned thunderstorm. I do find myself wondering sometimes if it’s a coincidence that my views/earnings started to nosedive at about the same time Coach Tony took over from Ev. I don’t believe in coincidences and Ev saw where things were headed from the inside, so…
No, to close out the month I won’t be ranting about any of those things. Today’s rant is about something far more mundane, a maddening issue we have all dealt with at some point: the self-checkout at the local grocery store.
Stop rolling your eyes at me; this is a major pet peeve of mine and it was brought home in a massive way a few days ago. I have semi-relocated to East Texas while my mom recovers from pneumonia (and most recently a slipped disc, because she can’t catch a damn break), and I was at a Wal-Mart in Tyler picking up a prescription and some groceries. Actually, it’s a Super Wal-Mart, and I do mean super; it’s only slightly smaller than AT&T Stadium. It also has 38 checkout registers (I counted) that in years past would have been manned by their notoriously disinterested employees, enabling me to spend as little time in that hell-on-earth as possible. On that day, in the middle of the afternoon, do you know how many of those 38 registers were open?
None. Zilch. Nada.
There were two self-checkout areas on either end of the store, located roughly 2.3 miles apart. That distance didn’t matter, though, because only one area was open. It had six self-checkout registers, four of which were actually working, a fact that seemed completely normal to the fifteen people in line ahead of me since no one was even grumbling, let alone setting the store on fire. They were so calm and orderly, in fact, that I can only assume that all of them were British. No Texan would have remained silent at such an outrage, and since I am a Texan, I bitched to no one in particular for the entire 20 minutes it took for me to reach an open register.
That’s when things really went sideways. My dad deals exclusively with checks and cash (he was around when some of the presidents on our currency were in office and sees them as old friends). He had given me cash to pick up the items, but after scanning everything and hitting the “pay with cash” option on the screen, a message appeared that cash payment was not available at that time. Fine, I thought, I’ll use my debit card and keep the cash, no problem.
No problem, except that my wallet was in my damn car. Had I been at a registered operated by an actual human, they would have been able to take the cash; instead, I had to walk back out to the parking lot, the unhappy glares of my fellow shoppers boring holes through my back. I suppose I should be thankful the actual human assigned to ensure we scanned every item rather than just sticking stuff into the bag without paying didn’t make me void the transaction and go to the end of the line after retrieving my wallet. Had that happened, I would be writing this from the Smith County Jail.
Once the transaction was finally completed, around 30 minutes from the time I first got in line, I went immediately to the customer service counter and asked to see a manager. A pleasant enough gentleman appeared and asked how he could help me. I told him I wanted my $7.00, which he mistakenly thought meant a refund of some sort. I explained that I had spent half an hour essentially doing a job that an employee should have been doing, that their average starting salary now was $14.00/hr., and that I wanted my $7.00.
At first, he clearly thought I was joking. When he saw that I wasn’t, he stammered out the standard corporate-speak nonsense they teach you when they hand you keys to the place, complete with effusive apologies. The apologies may have been more effusive than with his normal spiel, because although there was a counter between us, I was about three times his size and obviously mentally unhinged. I was unimpressed.
Before he could call security, however, my phone rang. It was my dad wanting to know where the hell I was with his blood pressure meds and tacos (I was supposed to stop at a Mexican place on the way home). I started to explain that I was busy taking a righteous stand, then remembered I have to live with him and denying an 86-year-old man tacos is a recipe for disaster. I gave the manager my best “this isn’t over” stare and left to get the damn tacos.
It was the right decision. They were more delicious than anything the Smith County Jail would have fed me.
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