A modern tragedy in seven acts, performed daily at a supermarket near you...
Stage 1: The approach (Denial)
It begins with the cart's tentative roll toward the self-checkout area, wheels squeaking a question nobody wants to answer. The shopper—someone's parent, anyone's parent—surveys the landscape like a general assessing enemy territory.
Six self-checkout kiosks blink expectantly. One traditional checkout lane hosts a line stretching back to frozen foods. The choice feels engineered, inevitable.
The approach involves several false starts. First toward the human cashier ("Maybe the line will move quickly"), then a U-turn back to self-checkout ("How hard can it be?"), followed by a full stop to observe another customer scanning items with the fluid confidence of someone who grew up believing machines were friends, not adversaries.
The younger customer ahead glides through their transaction like a pianist playing scales—scan, bag, tap phone, leave. The whole performance takes under ninety seconds. Our shopper watches with the concentration of someone trying to memorize a magic trick.
Young adults overwhelmingly choose self-service, while less than half of older shoppers feel the same enthusiasm. The remainder stand right here, clutching their carts like life rafts, wondering when buying milk became a technological aptitude test.
Stage 2: The first scan (Frustration)
The opening gambit is always produce. Never the nice barcoded bananas—no, it's loose butternut squash or Rainbow Chard or some apple variety called "Cosmic Crisp" that sounds like a breakfast cereal but requires navigating digital menus designed by someone who apparently sustains themselves entirely on pre-packaged items.
"PLEASE PLACE ITEM IN BAGGING AREA."
The machine's voice carries the patient condescension of a driving instructor who's seen too many curbs jumped. The item is in the bagging area. It's been in the bagging area. The bagging area and the item have become one.
"UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA."
Now the machine is gaslighting them. The shopper's movements become exaggerated, theatrical—lifting the item high, placing it down with the ceremony of a religious offering. Other customers begin to notice. The red light above the station blinks like a disco ball of distress.
They try typing "APPL" into the search function. The screen suggests "APPLE DEVICES AND ACCESSORIES." They backspace, hunt through pictographic menus that seem organized by neither alphabet nor logic. Is butternut squash under "Squash," "Butternut," "Vegetables," or "Seasonal Produce"? The machine waits with infinite digital patience while behind them, time becomes elastic.
The volume is set to eleven. Each beep echoes through the store like a foghorn. "PLEASE PLACE YOUR... COSMIC CRISP APPLES... IN THE BAG." Everyone within forty feet now knows their produce choices.
Stage 3: The loyalty card archaeology (Bargaining)
"Do you have a rewards card?" the screen asks, presenting options in text that seems specifically designed to challenge bifocals.
This triggers what younger shoppers view as an archaeological expedition. First, the wallet excavation—a leather artifact containing cards for every store visited since 1987. The Blockbuster membership card (just in case they reopen). The coffee shop punch card with three stamps from a location that closed in 2009. Loyalty cards for stores they've never heard of but might visit someday.
The correct card hides among its brethren like a specific needle in a stack of other needles. Some are on a keychain that could anchor a yacht. Others float loose in purse compartments that seem to exist in different dimensions.
"Would you like to enter your phone number instead?" the screen suggests, not mentioning this number must be whatever landline they had in 2003 when they signed up for the program.
They try three different numbers. The one they have now. The one they had before. Their spouse's number. Each rejection brings a cheerful "CARD NOT FOUND. TRY AGAIN?" Eventually they give up, accepting that today's groceries will cost forty cents more—a defeat that will be remembered.
Stage 4: The barcode hunt (Depression)
By now, a rhythm should emerge. It doesn't. Each item presents a new puzzle. Where's the barcode on a bag of chips that's 60% air? Why does yogurt have seventeen barcodes and the machine accepts none of them?
They develop techniques. The slow rotation method—turning items like rotisserie chickens until the laser finds its target. The smooth-and-flatten approach for crumpled bags. The prayer method for items with damaged barcodes.
Then comes the multipacks. A six-pack of yogurt that might scan as one item or six. The machine knows. The shopper doesn't. They scan one container—success! They place all six in the bag.
"UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA. PLEASE REMOVE ITEM."
They remove five yogurts. The scale recalibrates. They scan another yogurt. The machine thinks about this for what feels like hours.
"PLEASE WAIT FOR ASSISTANCE."
The red light resumes its distress signal. Around them, other self-checkout stations chirp happily, their users flowing through like salmon navigating familiar streams. One person appears to be checking out while simultaneously having a video call. Another scans items without looking, muscle memory guiding their hands. These displays of casual competence feel like personal attacks.
Stage 5: The payment paralysis (Desperation)
The groceries are somehow scanned. Victory feels possible. Then comes the payment screen—a digital hydra of options that multiply with each touch. Cash back? How much? EBT? Credit? Debit? Do you want to donate to the Children's Happiness Fund? Rate your experience? Sign up for emails?
The shopper reaches for their wallet with the deliberation of someone defusing a bomb. Inside: credit cards for specific purposes (this one for groceries, that one for gas, another for emergencies). The payment hierarchy makes perfect sense to them but would require a flowchart to explain.
They insert the credit card. Nothing happens. They remove it and try again, this time noticing the helpful illustration showing the chip facing the other direction. The machine beeps disapprovingly. They flip the card. Still wrong. There's a third orientation they hadn't considered.
"PLEASE INSERT OR SWIPE CARD."
They swipe. Too fast. They swipe again. Too slow. The Goldilocks zone of card swiping remains elusive. Behind them, the line grows—a mixture of sympathetic peers who nod knowingly and impatient youth composing mental TikToks about this exact scenario.
Finally, the chip reader works. "DO NOT REMOVE CARD" the screen commands. They wait. The machine thinks. Somewhere, data travels to space and back. "APPROVED. REMOVE CARD." They pull. Nothing. They pull harder. The card shoots out like it was spring-loaded, nearly achieving escape velocity.
Stage 6: The assistant intervention (Acceptance)
The blinking red light has summoned them: the Self-Checkout Guardian, typically someone young enough to be their grandchild, wearing the expression of a saint who's conserving miracles.
"Let me help you with that," they say, fingers flying across hidden menus, entering codes that apparently bypass the laws of physics. The shopper watches with a mixture of gratitude and humiliation, feeling like they're wearing what researchers have called the modern equivalent of a dunce cap.
This is when the real conversation begins. Not about groceries, but about the existential weight of being asked to do someone else's job without training, without pay, without the human interaction that once made errands feel less like exile.
"I don't understand why they can't just hire more cashiers," the shopper says, a statement that's really a question that's really a lament for a world that moved on without asking permission.
The assistant nods, noncommittal. They've heard this before. They'll hear it again. They explain about the coupon that needs manager approval, about how the machine thought that butternut squash was a PlayStation 5, about how sometimes the scales just need a moment to think about their lives.
"Here's a trick," the assistant says, showing them how to mute the volume. "For next time." Both of them know there's zero chance this information will be retained. Next time will be exactly like this time, only with different produce.
Stage 7: The exodus (Hope)
The receipt prints with the enthusiasm of a printer low on ink. But the transaction isn't complete—not until the receipt is examined with the thoroughness of a legal document.
Every item checked. Every coupon discount confirmed (they did eventually scan, thanks to the assistant's digital sorcery). Every total calculated mentally, because trusting the machine feels like trusting a cat to guard tuna. The receipt is carefully folded and placed in the wallet's designated receipt compartment, where it will remain until tax season or the eventual heat death of the sun, whichever comes first.
In the parking lot, loading bags into the car, there's time for reflection. These self-checkout interactions can leave people feeling frustrated and isolated. But there's something else too—a small pride in having navigated the gauntlet, in proving adaptability even when adaptation feels like surrender.
They'll tell their spouse about it later. The machine that wouldn't recognize carrots. The assistant who saved the day. The way nobody makes eye contact in the self-checkout area, everyone locked in their own private battles with technology.
Tomorrow, they'll shop at the same store. The self-checkout will still be there, blinking its false promises of convenience. The human cashier line will still stretch to frozen foods. And somewhere in between—in that space where technology meets humanity and neither quite wins—the daily negotiation continues.
Final words
Self-checkout represents more than technological progress; it's become a generational Rorschach test. For those who remember when grocery stores employed teenagers as baggers and cashiers who knew your name, being asked to scan their own groceries feels like being asked to accept that efficiency matters more than employment, that speed trumps service, that human interaction is a bug to be debugged.
The seven stages play out thousands of times daily across America—each iteration a small drama of resistance and adaptation, of dignity maintained despite systems seemingly designed to erode it. The shoppers navigate these machines not because they want to, but because the alternative is accepting a different kind of defeat.
Watch closely next time. Notice the determination in the face of the "UNEXPECTED ITEM" warning. The small victory of a successfully scanned coupon. The human spirit refusing to be reduced to a series of beeps and error messages.
Because in the end, this isn't really about groceries or technology or generational divides. It's about the daily act of insisting on humanity in spaces increasingly designed to forget it exists. And in that insistence—frustrated, embarrassing, inefficient as it may be—lies something worth protecting, something no machine can scan or system can optimize: the stubborn human refusal to go gentle into that good night of automated everything.
Even if it takes an extra fifteen minutes, requires two assistants, and ends with them promising themselves they'll try the regular checkout next time, line be damned.
Even then. Especially then.
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