Automated Checkouts

Do you ever look around at the world and thing that the future actually happened while you weren't looking.

When I go to my local Supermarket - let's call it Sainsbury's for that is its name - I'm not broadcasting on BBC radio or on any BBC medium come to think of it, I can endorse whatever brand I want - I was in Tesco's - I was in Sainsbury's - I was in Costcutter.

I was hoping that last bit would feel more liberating than it actually did.

Anyways, so I was in Sainsbury's and I had my bachelor style basket, which you'll see lots of single men carrying around Sainsbury's which is a basket with a tower of stuff teetering at the top, where there's normally something potentially explosive, like eggs at the top, and I was looking for a checkout.

All pretty normal supermarket fair so far, I'm at the checkout area of the till, with shopping looking to pay for it and leave.

Stick around, this story is only going to get more exciting. Or at any rate, and this is a cast iron guarantee, it's not going to get more boring. Or if it does I'll kill myself on stage.

Just as a side point to any women in the audience who may have spent some time wondering why said men - like me - haven't just employed a modicum of forward planning and got a trolley, and I can give you a very simple answer to this question.

When a man walks into Supermarket he thinks to himself. I don't need anything. There' s load of stuff in the cupboards, I'm not really sure what any of it is, but I'll just get a few bits and bobs for tea tonight, I'll be fine.

And then a man walks around a supermarket and the Supermarket presents to him all manner of things he might need and may well have run out of, but because he has literally no idea what he has at home he just buys everything.

For a man, a supermarket is a giant aide-memoire of food and groceries. For a woman, or a man who inhgerited the very rare 'planning ahead' gene, couple of men nodding alomng in the audience there. I see you're pretty pleased not to be tarred with the same brush as all these other men and frankly, looking around, I can see why you'd feel that way.

The only slight downside though of having the very rare planniong ahead gene is that it is almost always coupled with the tiny cock gene.

Oh well. It's not lenght, it's girth, that's what the ladies say.
Unfortunately though this is the tiny cock girth gene.

Oh well.

So, the fact that most men lack this gene is this is why men end up with tiny baskets laden with goods. And women walk around with trolleys with everything sort of pre-ordered before its packed even, and mark my words, nothing soft at the bottom getting squashed.

Whereas there's a minimum of one squashed lettuce at the bottom of every male bachelor's tower of goods in a basket. Guaranteed.

So, I'm looking for the checkout. Trying to steady the centre of balance on my tower of stuff so that whatever fragile object at the top - it's either a tiny jar of mustard which I buy every single time I got to the supermarket and then get home and put it in a cupboard with all the other tiny jars of mustard yet miraculously every time I go to the supermarket, just somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind is a voice that just will not be quited.

"Have you got any mustard Matt?
Might be worth picking up some Mustard,
Have you got any mustard?"

Even if I do manage to quiet the voice by saying
"I'm sure I've got Mustard now leave me alone" the voice waits a while and then comes back "are you 100% sure you've got mustard".

So I buy mustard.

I don't even eat mustard.

And I hardly ever use it in cooking. it's just the idea of not having it in the kitchen I seem to have set up as some kind of adult anxiety when someone comes around to the flat and says "have you got any mustard" and I, shame faced, say no.

But this is even what I want to talk about. The more alert of you will remember at the start I was talking about the future having already arrived while no one was looking and this is what's happened in Sainsbury's.

Because now, you can check your own stuff out, the need for a checkout person has gone. You have the opportunity, and who knows why you'd want to take it, to become your own checkout person.

I'm sure you've all seen this, but you go over to these checkout units. Put your bags down and then ring through the bar codes and put them in another bag.

Now, I can put my hand on my heart and say, and I've wondered about all manner of useless stuff in my time on the planet so far, but I have never, ever, wondered what it would be like to be a checkout person.

It's just not something I've wondered about.

Maybe because when you buy things and see the checkout person all the information's already there. You can see what's happening. You know what a bar code is. There's no magic at work here, no slight of hand.

It is what it is.

And now, I can exclusively reveal, having tried my hand, quite literally at checking stuff out, it is, if anything, a tiny bit more boring than I thought it would be.

But it being a self-service thing and all it manages to combine boredom with incredible frustration. After you've beeped one of the items, if you then put it in the wrong place a rather officious voice shuts the whole thing down and says

'Item incorrectly placed. Please remove from the bagging area'.

And then you get incredibly frustrated. I wonder if they test those voices in military situations to come up with the most annoying tone they can possibly find.

I think it's the combination of being a bit posh, and sort of soothing but in a situation where a soothing voice only annoys you especially if you keep making the same mistake and it's repeated over and over and over again.

"Item incorrectly placed. Please remove from bagging area."
"Item incorrectly placed. Please remove from bagging area."
"Item incorrectly placed. Please remove from bagging area.".

It would be much more humane if in the first place it was a real voice, by which I mean someone normal, maybe a Geordie voice would be good. I think Geordie voices are underused.

(Geordie accent) "Your shopping's not where it should be. Move it"

And then if you keep making the same mistake

"Look, I know I know I sound like I'm repeating myself but move your shopping, will you.
Y'daft knacka.".

I think the Geordie recorded voice option needs a bit of work there.

Once you've messed up leaving the shopping in the bagging area , the next part is then having to call over an assistant for a bit of help so you can continue shopping. Basically, she comes over and shows you how to "move the item from the bagging area" ,or more pertinently she shows you what and where the bloody bagging area is and you can move on.

This old dear was doing self-service checkout next to me and was suffering the same fate as me. "move your item from he bagging area" and she was really losing her rag. She got the Sainsbury's woman to come over five or six times to explain to her what the bagging area is and let's face it, who really cares".

And then the woman went away again and this old dear's ringing though some Sherry and the machine says to her

"You must be over eighteen to buy this item. Please call assistant"

Over eighteen? She was over eighty. And she was staring at that machine like she was ready to tear it apart from the ground up.

And fair play to her, if she'd have started I think I probably would have joined in.