A true test of one’s patience is to be in a busy grocery store, standing in the self-checkout lane and watching people try to interface with the technology in front of them. They keep these things very simple so you’d think that someone that was apparently able to successfully dress themselves and drive to the store could figure it out without a great deal of coaching. That is not always the case.
Part of the problem is that some of the people who try to do this don’t appear to be comfortable with technology in general. If you can’t program your VCR yourself, don’t bother trying the self check-out line. I refer to the older woman that was in front of me yesterday. She looked very confused the whole time and had no real idea what she was looking at on the machine. I felt bad and tried to help her out a little. It’s entirely likely that she couldn’t read the screen clearly or had issues following the voice prompts but, if that’s the case, why get in that line? That’s the decision that confused me. It really wasn’t that much shorter than the other lines.
That was the unfortunate part of the process. I gravitate to the self check-out lines because they are shorter. I took a chance on them once when the store wasn’t busy and learned what I had to learn then. A crowded store is not the time to line up to take a chance like that. Especially when then slows down the rest of the line. That’s just not nice to the rest of the group.
I mean, I got English Muffins to buy…
