JustSayin.net

Completely random post incoming.

I'm at the grocery store last night and promptly developed a new Pet Peeve.  Let me first say, I love the idea of the self-checkout.  If I run in quickly to pickup some Ketchup, Milk, and Doritos, I love the fact that I can walk up to my own checkout aisle and take care of myself.

That said, this country needs to establish some rules on these things.  After spending about 20 minutes shopping around my local grocery store last night I made my way to the checkout.  I won't say which store it was, but just that it rhymes with "Bopper's Mood Bearhouse".  Upon arrival at the checkout scene I make my way to the self checkout.  All I have is some Greek Salad Dressing and Ravioli's (don't ask).

There was this one girl at the self checkout, with roughly 74 items in her cart.  It was all I could do not to rip open my ravioli bag and throw some frozen pasta at her.  For those of you that have never been through a self checkout because you fear the future or something, they are a little different.  The machine overall is much slower, because it doesn't want you to make mistakes and hold other people up (more on this later).  Also, if you are buying alcohol, it won't let you move on until you show your id to a nearby attendant, thus slowing everyone else down, again.

Let's go over the process:

1. Scan your item and place it in the bag - if you don't place it in the bag, the machine goes nutso and starts yelling at you to do so.  This is how it stops you from stealing or something.

2. Wait 5 seconds or so.

3. Scan next item and place it in the bag.  If you have fruit or veggies I think the process gets more complicated, but I haven't made that leap yet so I can't get into it.

4. Coninue on this path, pausing about 5 seconds between items until you have scanned and bagged all your groceries.

5. Enter your coupons if you have them.

6. Choose method of payment and pay.

You can see it takes quite a while.  So long in fact that I jumped into a normal line with around 6 people in front of me.  They had anywhere from 3-25 items and by the time I finished checking out, that woman was still in the self checkout line.  Yeah, she had coupons.

Please stop the madness.  I have a dream of an America where you cannot self checkout with more than 10 items.  If a politician runs on that platform they have my vote, even if they have a history of severe cruelty to children and old people, while hating puppies.

The other part I despise about self checkout is how it talks to you like you're 4 years old.  "Please gently slide your item, bar code facing the scanner, across the checkout area.  Now place the item slowly in the bag".  Like I've never seen a cashier before.  I'd like to meet the person that needs those instructions.

• Machine - "Slide item across bar code scanner with bar code facing it".


• Idiot - "Ok, interesting these computer.".  (slides item)


• Machine - "Now place item in the bag".


• Idiot - "Oh, I see where you're going with this machine.  Now we're cooking!"

Enough on this though.  I feel better now.