I was zipping through Tops, picking up stuff for dinner, and as I cruised up and down the aisles I passed three of the regular cashiers, either doing returns or tagging shelves. Hmm, I thought, this can’t be good. When I got to the front it was a zoo – a sea of carts and only four cashiers open. To make matters worse, just three of the four self-checkouts, or “Easy Scans” as they call them, were functional. I weighed my limited options and moved down to the self-checkouts, which only had three customers waiting. Most shoppers must hate them as much as I do. My patience was wearing thin as I watched the people fumble their way through the process, some of them obviously new to it, scanning and rescanning, stopping dead to listen every time the computerized voice said anything, and turning items around and around, looking for a bar code. Aldi’s solved that problem by putting a UPC on all sides of their boxes, bags and packages. Tops should follow suit if they want this DIY system to work smoothly. Suddenly I looked to my left, and some greasy slob with tattoo sleeves had started a second line. “Whoa!” I said to him, “The line’s over here!” He looked at me like I had several heads, pointing at the checkout stands in front of me. “You’re on line for those, I’m on line for these.” “No, no, no. There’s only one line,” I protested, looking to the cashier standing commandingly at the monitor station, like Alex Trebec holding court at the lecturn on Jeopardy. She quickly turned her head and pretended to be engrossed in a conversation two Mexican gas workers were having in Spanish. “Are you kidding me?” I laughed, exasperated. The point was moot, because the old lady in front of me finally figured out how to weigh her bok choy and properly insert her coupons, and was gathering up her bags. I was still annoyed as I quickly moved in and began scanning my groceries. I slid a twelve pack of orange seltzer, my last item, over the glass and hit “Pay Now”. That’s when I noticed the bag of potato rolls in the seat of the cart. Shit! “Perdoneme,” I called to the cashier. “You talking to me?” she asked, head cocked. “Oh, so you do speak English,” I zinged. “I already hit “Pay Now”, but I forgot to scan these,” I told her. She stared a minute, trying to figure out whether or not she should help me after I had just insulted her. “Push the back key,” she snarled, returning to her podium. Tattoo Man was still trying to figure things out, flipping a bag of potato chips over, searching for the elusive bar code. “Bottom right corner,” I smiled as I headed out the door.
Posted on: Sat, 14 Sep 2013 21:58:53 +0000
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