The Old Year is perishing into oblivion. The New Year is crowning, with new blessings to bestow. And I am standing in a self-checkout lane listening to a computer tell me there is an unknown item in the bagging area.
There is no cashier around to assist me. At least I THINK you call them “cashiers.” Although they don’t handle much cash anymore.
Yesterday, for example, in a big-name retail store, my cashier paged his manager for help because he didn’t know how to make correct change when I asked him to break a $100-dollar bill. This cashier was in his mid-thirties.
“You can’t call them ‘cashiers’ anymore,” says one fellow shopper, whose self-checkout computer is also saying there is an unknown item in her bagging area.
We are both waiting for assistance. That’s what the computer tells us to do.
“Saying ‘cashier’ is outdated,” my new friend says. “You’re supposed to call them ‘checkout associates.’”
Meanwhile, both our machines are speaking to us, at the same time, using loud, authoritative, apathetic, computerized voices, akin to a 1968 Stanley Kubrick sci-fi film.
My fellow shopper is frazzled, like me. Our self-checkout warning lights are blinking, with huge monolith beacons above our heads.
The whole store is staring at us. Two felons, caught redhanded, committing the very serious offense of forgetting to weigh our produce.
There are flashing messages on both of our display screens, reading, “¡Artículo desconocido en el área de empaquetado!”
Finally an employee finds us.
The young cashier/sales technician/digital-sales associate comes jogging from the breakroom. She is wearing her work vest. She is chewing food, as though we have interrupted her lunch.
She looks just as disgusted with these machines as we are.
She scans her card, punches in the correct code. “We’re short staffed,” she explains.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “It looks like we’ve interrupted your lunch.”
The employee shrugs. “It’s no problem. I’m used to it. They don’t expect me to eat anymore.”
“Whose ‘they?’” I ask.
Shrug. “Bosses. Managers. Supervisors.”
“You’re not allowed to eat?”
“Well, we had an employee quit this week. So now they expect me to watch these stupid machines DURING my lunch break.
“And I certainly can’t eat standing out here, we’re not allowed to eat in front of customers. Yesterday I ate a granola bar while standing here and I got in trouble.”
“That doesn’t sound fair.”
“It ain’t fair. They’re the ones who hired computers instead of people.”
I ask the young woman if she enjoys working with fickle electronics for a living.
She laughs. “No way. But we have to have them. None of our cashiers even know how to count change anymore, even after we train them. They don’t know basic math. Personally, I miss making correct change. I was so fast back in the day.”
“They don’t know basic math?”
She shakes her head. “They’re too young. They’ve been using cellphone calculators since kindergarten. I had to teach one employee that a quarter is NOT worth $.50 cents, and he was in college.”
“Seriously?” remarks my fellow lawbreaking shopper, whose warning light is still blinking, whose screen is accusing her of premeditated banana theft in Spanish.
“May I ask you a question?” I ask the employee. “What do you think is going to happen to us, now that our whole lives are run by machines?”
“Who’s ‘us?’” the employee asks.
“Society. America. Humans.”
“Don’t know. Someday we prolly won’t even have employees. Just computers. Nobody will ask how you’re doing today. Nobody will smile and tell you to have a nice day. Nobody will even care about customers. There won’t be a human connection at all, just machines to take your money.”
“May I ask you another question?” I say.
“Sure.”
“Can you break a $100?”
She smiles. “I thought you’d never ask.”