Check Yourself Out ... Or Not!
If you want to break the ice at the “strangers” table at a wedding (or anywhere if you don’t get invited to weddings, which—like newborns at other people’s houses—is a blessing), ask them this. What do you guys think about self-checkout lines at stores?
It is not as contentious as fishing for an opinion about Donald Trump, abortion, or Israel, but as mundane as it might seem, the ‘debate’ can get quite animated. People have strong opinions about it.
You’re not ending friendships between strangers you just met at a wedding, so why not?
Unless, of course, it opens an old wound with a couple across from the centerpiece you could win if your birthday is closest to the day of that happier union you assembled to celebrate.
If that doesn't work, bring up Trump - unless there is an open bar or because there is, and you’d like to place bets on what time the police will show up to join the happy couple on their special day. If anyone asks, say something about self-checkout lines, which, in my experience, older folks like less.
They seem to prefer hands-on, face-to-face interactions. Yes, there are the get-off-my-lawn types, but those folks just like to tell people off. You need people to do it (the lawn is optional). Personal interaction is otherwise something they used to understand.
Many people my age (not old, exactly, but nearing retirement) grew up before computers but with computers. They built them, worked on them or with them, and followed the technology as it advanced. My first was a Commodore 64. I got an external hard drive, a monochrome monitor, and a dot matrix printer. I was writing even then.
You’d think I’d be better at it by now.
Like them, I also enjoyed sports (participant or spectator), picnics, going out to the movies, parks, ponds, fishing, and time with friends doing nothing. We were social, and tech didn’t intimidate most of us. It had a way of pissing people off back then (no age limit), but then it still does that today,
Most younger folks, culturally baptized in a world with the internet, seem to prefer the self-scan but would rather order everything online and have it delivered (perhaps) to avoid having to talk to or deal with other people in person (including each other, which I understand).
Self-check wasn’t new to this century, but we all learned to order from Amazon.com and get pizza delivery once in a while. And then there was Grub Hub and Uber Eats, and it was all pretty chill until the Fire Nation Attacked. Sorry, I meant the pandemic struck. The response to it converted delivery and self-checkout into a cornerstone of modern culture.
Face-to-face face interaction was to be avoided. The shopping landscape became cluttered with aisle arrows, distancing dots, temperature checks, and papers, please (I’ll show you my papers!).
Digital portals became a prerequisite to accessing customers in a wide range of businesses, and you got on board or (maybe) went out of business.
Opportunity Knocks (you down and smothers you)!
If you missed out on investing in plexiglass, PPE, toilet paper (ventilators for about five minutes), digital conferencing software, or Moderna (Lucky Bill Gates), you were like most of us—just looking for a path through it. The full extent of the trail of pandemic response wreckage may never be made public, but it wasn’t all bad.
You can now get home delivery or pick up of almost anything from more places to more places than ever before. And this is not a new idea. We still had fresh milk delivery when I was a kid, and a few grocery stores still did that, too. Then it went away. But technology (and pandemic political interventions) made it new again.
Markets and competition forced businesses to find a way to make it work, no matter how large or small the operation (assuming your business survived the pandemic “response”).
I’m not diminishing any of that tragedy. I’ve written (hundreds of) articles about it from nearly every angle (just not on Substack) and will write many more. But we can’t change the past. We can only write about it, take the small wins, and learn the hard lessons.
Before March 2020 (and those arbitrary days to flatten a curve), I preferred online shopping and getting things delivered. It is a convenience with a human-chemical high that (IMO) surpasses the message alert beeps on your smartphone (which does nothing for me, honestly).
It arrived!
What is it?
It’s a … widget! (Stimpy-Like Doe-Eyed Joy!)
If there is a self-checkout at a brick-and-mortar store, I’ll use it because, as hard as I try, millennial cashiers with gender studies degrees who can’t add and subtract in their heads … bother me. It might be a failure of government schools and technology, but if you ask them, I have white privilege (even if they, too, are white).
I also like to pay cash for things (dining out, guns, ammo, hookers, blow - parts of this parenthetical are a joke), so if the topic comes up at that total stranger’s wedding table, I can go either way. But I’ll take the anti-social self-checkout given the option.
It's not because I’m antisocial; you can walk on my lawn if you want. Just take a few pinecones with you as you pass through. There's no charge. It’s because I like doing it myself, and I get out the door faster.
A lot faster.
One exception: my local Market Basket. It used to be DeMoulas Market, with roots in Lowell, MA, back in 1917. They aren’t as ubiquitous as Dunkin’ Donuts, but there are a lot of them now.
Some locals still call it Demoulises for the same reason some people call it Wal-Marts. They are typically quick and efficient at the register. Volume and cart loads are no barrier to this kind of attention to service. There are lots of check-outs and baggers.
You don’t see that anywhere else—not really. Market Basket (at least mine) doesn't offer pick-up or delivery, and they do a good business.
Oh, and they don’t do self-checkout.
Some old things still work, and they are worth checking out.