‘Why having to use self-service checkouts makes me so angry’

Doesn’t it make you want to stamp your feet in rage. You’ve picked up a few items at the supermarket, the two counters open (out of the potential available 10) have long queues of heavily laden trolleys with disinterested shoppers idly flicking through the ‘No Idea’ magazines, so your only option is to go through the self-service checkout. Ugh! It is never easy.

You steer your stiff-wheeled trolley through the narrow gap where frustrated mothers with three vocal grizzling toddlers have opted to put their whole week’s shop through the self-service. The harried and harassed assistant is there handing out the plastic Simbas for every $30 spent and is busy dashing between each station as each shopper encounters issues with being forced to scan and pack their own shop — and pay for the privilege of doing so.

And so I begin. If it is a deep trolley (none of the shallow ones available), I bend forward to lift my first item out.

“Scan your rewards card now,” commands the machine in the bossiest tone.

“Stop nagging and just wait,” I reply as I fish it out of my wallet. People glance at me uneasily and I realise I have spoken out loud.

I place my bags in the bagging area and so it begins.

“Unexpected item in the bagging area,” it bellows.

“There is not,” I reply with some volume. It’s the carton of eggs I scanned. But no. It all stops. Lights flash. The harried assistant arrives and pokes in some numbers. I’m back again to my task.

I weigh and pack after scanning each item, my back is getting worse and it’s getting really crowded as a few obese people pack the enclosed space. Somebody has forgotten their deodorant.

The assistant is kept busy running between each station, negotiating the commands issuing from the speakers. I lift off my bag of vegetables too quickly and here is goes again. “Unexpected item in the bagging area.”

Feeling frazzled and frayed as I do my own scanning and weighing and packing whilst squashed in with the rest of humanity, I reflect and ponder on why indeed I am doing what the cashier used to do. In fact, my shopping gave them employment. I realise everything is automated now, but surely it is better to keep people in jobs and make supermarket shopping, already a chore, less of a minefield of difficulty.

I stumble out of there, with my green bags hastily and badly stuffed with groceries. I steer my trolley off to the car to unpack and I see an unexpected item in my bagging area. It’s a little golden plastic Simba smiling up at me.

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