“Does your cat like that?”
The question barely penetrated my consciousness because I was busy looking up PEPPERS–JALAPEÑO. So she repeated it.
“Sir, does your cat like that?”
She was pointing at the bag of dry cat food sitting on the out tray.
“Yeah,” I said wondering where this was going.
A few moments earlier she had noticed me turning the parsley over in my hands looking for the four-digit produce code. She had come over and punched in the code from memory. I had thanked her and reckoned that our interaction was at an end, but there she was asking about my cat food.
“I use Purina,” she volunteered.
“Mm,” I responded as I picked up the cat food and my bag of other groceries.
“I’ll have to give that a try,” she said nodding at my cat food.
I walked away. I’m sure she was just being friendly, perhaps even trying to relieve the tedium of watching over the self-checkout lines, but if I had wanted human interaction, I would have waited in line for a cashier.
One response to “Self-Checkout”
At least there was someone there who was helpful!! I can’t count the number of times that I’ve had the red flashing light on my self-checkout station going and been completely ignored by the blase clerk whose job it is to take care of self-checkout issues at Safeway. Just a list: 1) it doesn’t like my personal grocery bag and makes me wait to ring in until it’s been “approved”; 2) I ring things through too quickly, it doesn’t register when I put them in the bag, and makes me wait until that clears; 3) it doesn’t like it when I put too many things in my bag, so as soon as the bag gets even half full, it gives me the “unknown item in bagging area” — even though it’s something I’ve already run through AND it’s in the same damn bag I’ve been filling; and finally 4) I buy either wine or beer, ring it through, and then have to wait some unknown length of time for the clerk to input my birthdate before I can pay.
Which is why I shop at QFC/Fred Meyer — they do it all with a handheld device, rather than having to walk to each self-checkout to ring it in manually at the station.
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to complain!!