The self checkout trap! 🪤

There is something really absurd about the self checkout. Supermarkets insist that it makes life easier. What it actually does is make me a part time employee with no training and no HR induction.

I walk into the supermarket feeling like a fully functional human being in possession of all my faculties. I leave feeling like my brain should be taken in for diagnostic testing!

I only ever use the self checkout if I have a few items. I don’t want to stand in a long queue behind people doing their Christmas shopping in early November or preparing for a war! I just want to get in, get out and go home!

My stress levels begin to rise as I walk up to the self checkout with my basket containing a loaf of bread, a pint of milk and a bottle of jam. That’s when I begin to hold an internal conversation.

‘It’s fine, relax, it’s only a machine and can’t hurt you! You are a grown woman! People have gone into space! You can surely manage to scan a barcode!’

The machine starts flashing options at me, giving me choices I don’t need or want. I press START but it’s not actually the start of the process. It’s the gateway to a series of interrogations. I put my basket down on the section marked BASKETS. Before I scan one single barcode it needs to know if I need a bag. I put my bag in the space provided and press ‘NO’.

And so the questions begin. Do I have a loyalty card? Am I paying by cash or credit card? Am I going bagless? I feel as if I’m entering a witness protection scheme. It is only after I have satisfied the machine by declaring my allegiance, my bag status and my future payment orientation, that it finally allows me to scan the first item! Unfortunately not all supermarkets follow the same process. They’re all different and all equally baffling!

I scan the loaf of bread. ‘Unexpected item in the bagging area’ the ludicrous machine informs me. That would be the item I have literally just scanned, the one I was told to scan three seconds ago! I now have to wait for assistance! It has summonsed the all knowing goddess of override who is currently helping six other people also fast becoming emotionally unravelled!

Finally the goddess arrives and looks at me disdainfully. She waves her magic wand at the machine while I start babbling excuses. ‘I did scan the loaf of bread’ I apologise. ‘I can’t understand how this has happened.’

I feel like a common criminal yet I’ve not knowingly done anything wrong! ‘Why is it so hard to scan a loaf of bread?’ I hear her thoughts. ‘It’s not rocket science!’ I silently reply as I stare back at her. ‘I should have gone to Waitrose and got an actual person to do this for me!’

‘You should be fine now’, she says patronisingly as I grab hold of the pint of milk. I reverently present it to the useless machine as if it’s a ceremonial offering. How can a piece of software make me feel so inferior? And, more to the point, why am I standing in front of it trying to justify myself? This is irrational and embarrassing. I can feel my blood pressure rising as I scan, re-scan, wait, re-scan, wait then hold my breath before emitting an internal scream! I scan the barcode again. I dare not flex a muscle and pray that it pings and I can move on.

After all this stress and mental degradation and I’ve finally scanned in the last item, the ludicrous machine asks me if I’d like to donate to charity? Am I ever going to get away from it? All these damn questions and all the while the queue behind me is growing longer. I’m becoming more flustered as I sense their irritation.

Finally I reach the end and point my credit card at another machine. Naively I think that I can now leave this ‘little shop of horrors’. But no, after fully dismantling my personality, dignity, confidence and emotional stability, it has the audacity to ask me, in a passive aggressive Mary Poppins voice, ‘How was your shopping experience today’?

Well, I’ll tell you!

It spiritually defeated me! I came in for a handful of items and am leaving questioning my eligibility to live amongst society. I’ve shaved ten IQ points off my cognitive functioning. I no longer feel like a capable adult! And there’s more! I don’t want convenience! I want a human cashier. I want someone to treat me like an equal.

Spending even longer at the supermarket than I ever dreamed possible I finally grab my bag and head for the exit. No one should ever experience this level of trauma when simply going to buy a loaf of bread, a pint of milk and a bottle of jam!👠