The area I live in has been without a large grocery store for many years. Long ago there was a Safeway at the corner of Knight and Kingsway but it closed down and the building there was turned into a flea market. The kindly folks at Safeway put a covenant on the property to insure that no other pesky grocery stores could be built there, to keep people in the neighborhood loyal to the not-very-convenient Safeways 20 blocks or more away. A curious strategy, one might think, but retail is a curious business sometimes!
Fast-forward to last year when, after years of planning and construction, the shiny new King Edward Village opened up on the site. A deal was arranged whereby the covenant was lifted in favor of granting an extra floor on the main residential tower, increasing it from 16 to 17 stories. The area now has a PriceSmart Foods, which appears to be a Save-On Foods with shorter hours and the pharmacy surgically removed (by the way, I’d like to offer a hearty hello to any HR people who are using Google Alerts to flag stories on the web containing the names of the businesses they work for, such as Safeway or PriceSmart Foods). Another difference I noticed is that each of the two entrances/exits to the store only have a total of two regular checkouts. They have many more of the self-serve variety, however, a not-so-subtle hint to maybe not bother those pesky cashiers who must be paid for their work when you could be having fun bagging your own groceries.
I have conspicuously avoided using the self-serve checkouts because if some nice young person is going to bag my stuff for me, who am I to stop them? Today, though, as I stood behind a man slowly lifting a watermelon out from under the baby stroller he was pushing (which appeared to be baby-free) and then eyeing the person in front of him puttering about trying to find money or courage or something and then finally glancing at that gleaming and line-free self-serve checkout stand just a few feet away, I gave in and figured I would give it a shot.
The first thing it does is ask me to scan my Save-On card. I do so and the machine chirpily acknowledges this. I take out my cloth bag and place it on the spot where a plastic bag has been stretched out, awaiting the scanned items. I use a cloth bag because I’m environmental and all that jazz. Plus the handles on plastic bags dig into your hands if you are carrying something heavy like potatoes or a Steven Erikson novel. The machine asks me to scan my first item. I do so and it reads back the amount it costs then tells me to place it in the bag. I do so. This is easy. And faster than waiting behind watermelon guy.
It then asks me to scan the second item. I again do so but this time when I put it in the bag, it reports that there is something invalid on the scale (which is what the plastic bag is stretched over) and it asks me to remove this object, whatever it may be. You see, the scale calculates the weight of every item scanned to make sure you aren’t scanning one box of brownies and then stuffing 10 of them into your shopping bag. Keeps people honest or forces them to eat the other nine boxes of brownies while they stand there. I remove my ‘invalid’ cloth bag with the two scanned items. A girl comes over to help me and advises that I put my bag on the floor. This allows me to continue, but now I have nothing to put my items in. The cloth bag is on the floor, which is invalid and putting it on the scale is also invalid. I look over to the wall near me. They are selling cloth shopping bags for $1.38. Bags that will not work with their self-serve checkout.
I could just use a plastic bag but who knows what would happen if I place the previously scanned items back on the scale. The system might think I’m trying to steal brownies. A manager magically appears. I mean this almost literally. I have no idea where he came from, he was just there. Maybe the girl pushed an unseen button that sends a priority “Someone can’t figure the self-serve checkout” signal. The manager enables some sort of override on the system, he scans the last two items (I only had four in total) and I’m able to complete the transaction. By this time watermelon guy is long gone.
To recap, using the self-serve checkout:
1. Took longer than the regular checkout.
2. Required the help of two store personnel instead of none.
3. Got terribly confused by me ‘going green’ with a cloth bag — which the store itself sells mere feet away from the checkout.
Maybe there is a way this sleek and modern machine can be made to understand you are using a cloth bag and to take that into account but it didn’t seem like it. I can’t say I’ll be trying the self-serve checkout again anytime soon to find out, either!
Technology bad.
