Today was the last day I will use those faceless, nagging self-serve checkouts, because I have finally had enough of being herded into yet another of life's "pens", which are supposedly designed for "MY CONVENIENCE".
How can it be convenient to find that the callow teenager or overworked mother who normally scans my purchases is not available to ply their trade for me? What is convenient about wheeling my trolley to wait at a line where I know I won't even receive an insincere smile when I present myself for something called "SERVICE"? I can tell you that the words self-service and convenience have become oxymorons in the world of supermarket shopping, and I don't want to play any more.
And talking of morons, what idiot came up with this scintillatingly brilliant plan? A plan, I might add, that has ME doing the job of a supermarket employee, but receiving not one penny's reward for it! At the very least, I would have expected some discount to be applied to my final bill as recompense for the onerous task of wrestling with their moronic machines and piling purchases into bags that sit in cantankerous, consumer-suspicious receptacles.
I can only assume that the people involved in spreading this highly infectious electronic plague have never shopped for a family, and nor have common sense and the realities of life played a major part in their existence to date. Instead, some spotty, bean counting, computer engineering graduate (whose entire raison d'etre is playing electronic warcraft against other like-minded fools in netherspheric geekdom) is responsible for this travesty, for it is clear that the culprit has never been shopping in their seventeen years of life.
Have you ever been forced to use one of these weapons of mass obstruction? The Woolworths models have you pressing for assistance at least three times throughout your shop, and I'm convinced that the machines in Coles and Kmart are programmed to consider every shopper either an imbecile or a liar. Have you wrestled with the one that weighs everything to the left of the console, and then challenges you because the toilet rolls you scanned don't fit into the inadequate receptacle, and thus cannot be weighed?. Have you, like me, simply abandoned your shop when an electronic voice pretends to know what you are doing and then begins to guide you (in that tone you so hated as a kid when your mother was trying to get her point across - "Now, listen to me, Lorraine; until you do as I say, you will not, I repeat not be allowed to play outside"......"Please place the item into the blah-blah-blah for your convenience blah-blah-white-noise, or you will not be allowed to leave the store with your purchases, and you won't get any pudding for dessert, you wicked shoplifter.")
And what else do these corporate giants (another oxymoron) want from us? First, they took away the packer - are you old enough to remember the slightly awkward youth in the ill-fitting apron who stood at the end of the checkout and placed all of your purchases into bags for you? Not only did he use something called a PAPER BAG (which had a multitude of recycling uses and was totally biodegradable and environmentally friendly), but he was also still at school, and packing supermarket bags was his first introduction to REAL LIFE. My first after-school job was as a "checkout-chick" in Coles, long before scanners made the job idiot-proof, and without it, I would not have had a single thing to put on my CV (which they called a resume back then). Supermarket work, whether it involves stacking shelves, sweeping floors or serving customers, was the backbone of the teen job market, and it has given millions of people their introduction to working for a living and understanding the value of money. Today it seems, several dozen worthless certificates from "Job Providers" have replaced valuable experience, and the young have to vie for jobs at a rate comparable to the queues during the Great Depression.
Evidently, machines designed for MY CONVENIENCE, (and the inevitable "Supermarket Self-Serve Massacre" when a harried, post-menopausal woman on lithium eventually takes umbrage at being accused of lying by a machine) have now ripped the heart out of the teen job market, and purely for the sake of the bottom line.
Do these fools know that they are pushing customers away in their attempt to shave a poofteenth-of-a-percent off of costs in an attempt to please shareholders? Are they not aware that they are creating the biggest job drought in history by denying the young their first foray into menial labour? Are they so stupid that they think they can introduce more and more CONVENIENCE TOOLS for shoppers and that their customers won't begin to catch on as to what is really afoot? If such things go unchallenged, and if we do not put up our hands and say "Stop - I do not like this", then how far will they go? Until we find ourselves having to swipe our "Rewards-Slash-Easy-Pay-Slash-Loyalty-Club-Card" to gain entry to the supermarket, at which point we will undergo a retina scan before taking our enormous trolley and then proceeding along aisles (polished by a robo-cleaner) to select purchases that all bear the same labelling - the ONE BRAND. In supermarket land, this would be the dream outcome for our spotty, bean counting, computer engineering graduate (whose entire raison d'etre is playing electronic warcraft against other like-minded fools in netherspheric geekdom). In my world, it would be yet another win for the "blandification" of our wonderful human race as they shop without any other live interaction at all. And don't think that it won't happen - the earth was once flat, and man couldn't fly.
Well, I am no longer going to play ball with these people. They can either give me a discount for having to do their work for them or they can rip out their offensive machines and HIRE A TEENAGER.
Well, that's my first Common Sense rant over (and this world is so full of stupidity that I daresay it won't be my last). As I type this, I wonder how long it will be before my supermarket rewards card identifies me as a trouble maker, and has me banned from the hallowed aisles of corporate greed and electronic stupidity. Hopefully, at around the same time that a sensible supermarket opens its doors, reintroduces the customer service experience, hires a shipload of teenagers and brings back the paper bag. I like to think that out there somewhere, that person is just waiting for their chance to give us back our faith.
