I love technology, I’m not even going to lie about that for one minute. Without a lot of it, I would be pretty damn bored and annoyed with a lot of things in the world. Life without google is a whole lot harder, and who else is going to answer your homework questions when you can’t find the answer in the book you paid 150 dollars for (god damn you college!).

But some people, hate technology, and I mean hate it. I think these people think technology is out to get them, there can’t be any other explanation. The hate I see directed toward modern conveniences some days just shocks me. But its such a two-sided affair, you can have a guy yelling at his cell-phone due to shitty coverage while he has nothing to say about his garage opener. Why do I bring these two cases up, I just want to point out that I’m pretty sure his garage opener is more than likely to kill him then his cell phone. Garage doors fall sometimes, and personally I’d rather have a cell phone crash on my head then a garage door crashing through my car severing my body in half.

But I digress, technology really ties in with grocery stores with one simple advancement that people seem to hate: Self-Checkouts, or as a lot of customers seem to think: the beginning of the end.

These MACHINES, these KILLERS OF LABORS, are not only taking our jobs, but they are also worthless machines that can’t get anything done right. I’ve worked at our self checkout machines for close to four years now, and some of the complaints I hear are just RICH, absolutely rich in flavor. The sad thing is, most of these problems can be simply remedied by READING THE FUCKING INSTRUCTIONS. Not only are the instructions written, all over the stand, on the screen apparently no one reads, but heres the kicker, they are blared at the customer in probably the most annoying voice ever. How can this be missed? Please, give me that blank stare like its my fault because you don’t understand a simple convenience.

Self-Checkouts, as envisioned by my grandmother "its staring into my soul" she cries.

I understand somethings can be scary, but honestly just calm down and read these said instructions or ask for help. Don’t get so angry over something so simple you throw a tissy fit for everyone to laugh at (yes we will tell stories about it, and yes we will laugh with customers at you, you are a spectacle).

Heres a simple guide to the self-checkouts:

• When the check-out says “welcome to X Store” it is welcoming you, warming you up to its warm robot intelligence. You can talk back if you want, but honestly it won’t hear you and telling it to shut up without muting the volume does nothing!!
• When an item is scanned and it points out on the screen with a nice animation to put it into the bagging area near you, you really should. Don’t stare at the computer when it gives you an error stating No Item in bagging area, and more importantly if you don’t want to bag the item you can push the LARGE BUTTON on the screen that says I don’t want to bag this item. Again, written on the screen and pointed out by the sweetheart of a computer.
• These self-checkouts are weight based, so when you sit your portly child into the bagging area where you throw your groceries, of course its going to beep and scream at you. It doesn’t like when items that shouldn’t be in the bagging area are in it. I’m not going to hit the button to remove the error, you’re going to remove your child who weighs 23.3 pounds according to my terminal off of the weight area.
• Don’t forget your change asshole. When you come back complaining that you forgot your 13 dollars you left 3 hours ago, and we were unable to notice it and it was unfortunately taken by some bastard of a customer there is nothing we can do about it. Complain all you want, but what are these called again? Oh that’s right self-checkouts. SELF, you know self as in its your responsibility?

And most importantly to all the customers who retort “I don’t want to use those, they are taking away jobs!” when I ask them if I can help them through instead of waiting in line for a good 10 minutes while old man jacobs scans groceries at an alarmingly receding pace remember that I am actually working. There are no actual jobs being lost.

I just want to point out that not only all these self-checkouts TERRIBLY maintained from a software standpoint, it apparently takes about 4-5 different people to fix the damn things over a weeks time. So for every self-checkout we have I’m pretty sure it creates at least 15 different jobs. Someone has to answer the tech support, then someone has to delegate the local tech place, and then of course that place has to send someone out, and of course when that tech guy gets there he doesn’t have the actual authority to fix the part, so he has to get his supervisor to fix it, the supervisor comes in to get things ready and realizes that they don’t fix this part of the machine at all, its another company!

The self-checkouts really aren’t killing off the checkers/actual human being customer service, more so its the companies wanting to spend less money and its there excuse to have less man hours. Then they start to wonder why customer service scores are so low mainly due to lack of man power.

In the end, would you really want a bastard like me scanning your groceries over the cold, empty metal soul of a computer? If it means less dirty looks from people who are deaf and blind then it works for me.