Because pg 2 8-4-22

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Category: Current Issue

I absolutely love to use the self-checkouts in grocery stores. This love of scanning an item across a digital eye most likely stems from my childhood. Although I never worked in a grocery store, from as long as I can remember, I loved playing Grocery Store as a kid. I would turn my bedroom into a supermarket, stealing can goods and cereal boxes out of the kitchen pantry. Then, I would make my sisters take turns filling up my plastic grocery cart so that I could pretend to cash them out and bag up their goods.
As I got older and started grocery shopping on my own, I would look for any opportunity I could get to bag up my own stuff. Imagine my delight when they started making self-checkouts a thing. Of course, when these started, you only went to a self-checkout if you had a few items and never with produce. Now, self-checkouts are for all people with all store items. My childhood play dreams have come true as I am now free to scan and bag my own groceries! So why then am I finding myself more frequently waiting in the person-checkout line? Today’s grocery trip reminded me why…
I went to the store with about 10 items on my list. However, as a wife and mother, I cannot remember the last time I went into a grocery store and ONLY purchased the items on my list so my 10 items quickly became about 20 items.  Since I wasn’t purchasing a gift card and didn’t have any weird produce, I moved right into the next available self-checkout lane. My first few items scanned in just fine and I began carefully piling them up on the bagging scale area. Then…I came to my greeting cards. Crap! I had forgotten that I had greeting cards. The greeting cards scan in just fine, but they don’t usually weigh anything and the electronic eye scanner ‘lady’ that talks to me while I am scanning usually yells (it feels like a reprimand) at me to ‘Place my item in the bagging area’. I tried to avoid this by trying to drop my greeting card with strength onto the bagging area. No go. I tried placing it again and pressing down firmly before letting go.
This still didn’t work. And then my hesitation caused the dreaded announcement of “Help is on its way!” A store manager finally came to my rescue. He tricked the electronic eye scanner ‘lady’ by grabbing and placing a conveniently located Hershey’s chocolate bar into the bagging area which indicated to me that this was not the first time this manager dealt with the lack-of weight of greeting cards.
I had three more greeting cards to go... He stayed and got me through it with his Hershey’s bar trickery. I resumed my self-checkout duties only to discover that the first item on my list and the last to be withdrawn from my cart, was a bottle of my favorite coffee creamer which is NEVER able to be read by the electronic eye scanner ‘lady’ because the manufacturer places the code in the crevice of the weird bottle shape.  Again with the “Help is on its way!” blaring announcement. Despondent, I quickly bagged my goods and left, feeling like I wasn’t qualified to be a user of the self-checkout lane.
Shame! Shame!
Kathy Naumann, possessor of NATURALLY curly hair and the understanding that you can’t control everything!

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