SELF-CHECKOUT

I believed I was becoming accustomed to life in a self-checkout world. I had my go-to stores, the ones where I knew how to access an impersonal cash register with my Rewards Card. Knowing when to grab the handheld scanner and when to pass my box of pasta over the glass scanner allowed me to easily navigate a veritable maze of hoops meant to test whether I was aware of the latest updates.

I am a good customer. I thought I knew my role in this process.

A huge heat wave was rumbling into our part of the country just days before the 4th of July. Wise people cut their grass on Monday and hit the store on Tuesday. Everyone had fair warning that the heat and humidity would make Wednesday through the weekend horrible. 

I took my Aunt Lou to Walmart with me. She was more excited than I expected when I told her we each needed our own cart and that we would meet at the front of the store in an hour. “Oh! A whole hour! That is perfect!” she smiled as she glanced at the time on her watch.

I traveled up and down the aisles with a sense of purpose. As I stuck to my list, I did not succumb to the temptations of impulse buys. I did not need everything in the world; I just wanted the bare necessities. With fewer than twenty minutes remaining, I was wheeling through the produce section on my way to the long rows of checkout registers at the front of the store.

Aunt Lou was already finished and, seeing that I had a fairly full cart, told me to take my time. And here is where the confidence of my role in the self-checkout world changed.

Three choices were in front of me. The first, and the quickest, is the supposedly fewer-than-12-items corral. Here, a wrangler herds customers to smaller, individual troughs where people with varying degrees of self-checkout expertise can scan, bag, and exit at their own rate. But I needed space, so I passed this section.

I moved to the multiple longer aisles with the conveyor belts and larger bagging areas. I do not mind these. I like the privacy and ability to spread my stuff out before scanning. The larger bagging area is a perk I enjoy as well. If I must bag purchases on my own as someone watches me, give me room. Please, just give me room.

Unfortunately, every longer self-checkout aisle was closed. All of them. That just didn’t seem right to me, not right at all. 

In a fit of rebellion, I no longer wanted to participate in the self-checkout dance. I moved down the rows of registers, desperately looking for an open aisle where someone would be to help me. I found one. Just one. Of course, there were three other customers there, each with overflowing carts far more packed than mine. Standing here was not going to work for me either.

I had a choice. Stay and patiently wait my turn while the temperature rose outside or return to the corral. My aunt was waiting, and I wanted to get home to my dog sooner rather than later. Truth be told?  I began to resent the role I had played in this entire pact I was forced into at stores. I am ashamed that I considered just abandoning the cart out of frustration.

As I pushed my cart back towards the corral, I wondered how I became so impatient. When did I start to think waiting in line was such an inconvenience? Why couldn’t I just stand still and do some breathing exercises?

I wound my cart back into the corral like a lost cow, eyes all big as I looked for an open register, finally positioning it against a scanning machine just beside the register. I was careful to provide myself with a standing space that allowed quick access to my purchases relative to the scanner and the bagging area. I was a dejected pro, resigned to doing this the hard way. 

I could no longer see Aunt Lou. Hopefully she did not wander off too far; perhaps she found a bench or chair. I hope she didn’t get ice cream because this was going to take a while. Starting with cold items, I picked up my container of almond milk, passed its barcode over the glass, listened for the beep, and then placed it in the thin gray plastic bag. That’s one. I had a long way to go.

As I continued checking and bagging toothpaste, vitamins, and deodorant together, and began on dry items, I realized the bags would soon overflow in the area next to the scanner and that there would be no room in the cart. I could not put them on the floor, right? Nor could I put them back into the cart yet. 

The self-checkout was all becoming too much. I should have waited in the line at the other end of the store. I cannot believe I thought taking a full cart through the quick checkout was a good idea. I had made a bigger mess of everything than I anticipated.

My entire self-checkout experience had ground to a halt. I began to grow warm with embarrassment. I stood lost between the mountain I had yet to scan and the valley I had already bagged. Somewhere in the not-too-distant past, this would have been easier for me to do. Why am I so stuck?

I felt the eyes of the corral supervisor rise above her handheld device. I told myself she was judging me as I stood there, watching me as if I were a shoplifter. I also feared that a hidden camera somewhere in the scanning area was recording the manic look of my confusion. Were there people behind me who wondered what I was doing?

I was the man in the arena, stumbling and wondering how I could have done this better. The critics stood silently around in my mind, there but not there. Mere minutes seemed to last an eternity.  I wiped the dust, sweat, and blood from my face and told myself that if I were going to do this, I would need to ignore the naysayers in my mind.

I pushed the cart back out of my comfort zone so that I could try this from another angle. I pulled the remaining items from the cart and stacked them carefully on the small area to the right of the scanner. I was content to leave the bigger items in the cart. Soon, filled bags and unpurchased items sat on opposite sides of the scanner. I could do this now.

I used the hand-held scanner on a big oscillating fan box, a watermelon, and my new American flag. I went to the bottom of the cart and read every single can of beans and the jumbo jar of peanut butter I had stacked in a cardboard tray. I was breathing easier, moving more slowly with newfound purpose while putting the numerous full bags on top of these cans in the cart. In no time at all, I had finished, took a huge chunk out of my debit card, and was headed out the front door with my aunt.

“I was beginning to worry about you,” she said. “I kept looking over at you. You seemed to be getting frustrated at the register.”

“I will tell you something, Aunt Lou. You will find out when you get to be my age that all of this technology stuff is getting out of control. Sometimes I don’t even know what I am doing.”

She laughed and said, “Tell me about it.”