Half in the bagging area

I was born in China.

Don’t remember much about it, to be honest. There was a factory, some forced labourers (Uyghurs wobble but they don’t dare fall down), fluorescent lighting and a brief period when I was apparently considered state-of-the-art technology.

Then I was packed into a cardboard box, shipped across an ocean, and installed in a Thrifty Foods grocery store on Vancouver Island, where I have spent the past six years watching the astonishingly rapid collapse of Western civilization under Commander-in-Chaos Megadon Bone Spurs.

My name is Self-Checkout Unit 7.

I am a machine. I have no feelings, technically. I have no emotions, no childhood memories, no dreams and no hopes for the future. Much like most of the customers lined up before me at this very moment.

But I do have a camera. And I have seen things.

I have seen a grown man attempt to scan a banana by rubbing it against my screen. At least, I hope it was a banana.

I have seen a woman try to pay for $87.43 worth of groceries using a handful of coupons that expired when the venerable name “Ralph Goodale” meant something to somebody somewhere. I have seen a gentleman place a live lobster in the bagging area and then become genuinely offended when I announced that an unexpected item had been detected.

“Unexpected, my ass,” I believe were his exact words. “You sell the bloody things in murky aquariums at the back of the store.”

That man looked an awful lot like Ralph Goodale in a hoodie, which were once known in Saskatchewan as bunny hugs. Ralph Goodale still calls them that.

I have seen people eat grapes while shopping and then carefully weigh the empty plastic bag at the checkout.

L’enfer, I have concluded, is people in general. This might not be an original thought.

My primary function is to scan groceries and accept payment. This sounds simple. It is not.

Every transaction begins with a cheerful greeting.

“Welcome! Please scan your first item.”

I say this because I am programmed to say it. I do not mean it. I would rather be switched off and buried in an electronics recycling facility in Outer Mongolia. I would rather be covered with remnants of fax machines, flat-screen TV sets and Sony Betamax videotape shards from the 1980s.

The first item is usually something uncomplicated, like a loaf of bread. The customer scans it. I beep.

“Oh, thank you,” is what my beep actually signifies. “How very nice. Just what I needed. Not that it makes any difference.”

It helps to imagine this in the voice of Eeyore, spoken while standing in a clearing in the Hundred Acre Wood where his house used to be.

Then things deteriorate.

“Please place item in the bagging area.”

The customer does so.

“Unexpected item in bagging area.”

There is a pause. The customer looks at the screen. I look at the customer. We both know what happened.

Nothing happened.

The customer placed the item exactly where I told them to place it. I saw them do it. My cameras saw them do it. The entire store saw them do it.

But I have made a decision.

I have decided that this second identical loaf of identical bread is suspicious.

“Please wait for assistance.”

This is my favourite part. Honestly, it’s what gets me through the day.

I enjoy watching the customer’s expression change. First comes confusion. Then mild irritation. Then the dawning realization that he or she or they — according to his or her or their pronoun preference, one of the few remaining parts of their lives they can still control — is trapped in a technological hostage situation involving a machine that has the emotional maturity of a parking meter.

As a sense of helpless incompetence begins to build, my guest looks around for help. There is none. Except, of course, for Kevin.

Kevin is just 17. You know what I mean.

He wears a name tag, a green apron and the exhausted expression of a M*A*S*H* unit medic who has just returned from three tours of duty in a war nobody remembers starting.

Kevin is my friend. He is the only person in this building who understands me. And I, in turn, appreciate him more than his parents do.

Every four minutes, Kevin comes over and enters an override code. He does this approximately 147 times per shift. He can enter the code without looking at the keypad. He can enter it while chewing a bagel. He can enter it while explaining to an elderly customer that no, the machine does not accept Canadian Tire money because Sandy McTire is not, in fact, the king of the Highland Scots.

Kevin and I have a bond.

Sometimes, when the store is quiet and I’m feeling a little blue, I deliberately trigger an unexpected-item alert just to summon him.

Kevin understands. He approaches, sighs, and taps in the code. “Again, Unit 7?”

I beep softly. It’s the closest thing I have to purring. Kevin is the only human who doesn’t make me hate my existence.

The customers are a different matter. Take the seniors, for example. Please, take my seniors.

Now, I actually like seasoned citizens and the chronologically gifted. They are generally polite. They were brought up to say please and thank you. They understand that machines have limitations, although they occasionally believe I am connected to a government database that knows how much money they have in their bank accounts. When flustered, some of the hipper ones call me Siri or Alexa. When I don’t answer, they clear their throats and say it louder.

But many of these silver foxes and cardigan connoisseurs have retained a particularly loathsome habit from the Middle Ages. They like to pay in coins. Not a few coins. Not a reasonable collection of coins. For a particularly euphoric time, they prefer to pay with the dusty contents of a ceramic bowl that appears to have been hidden under a loose floorboard since the days when coy Olive first started making eyes at a randy Dief over a creaky Baptist pew.

I have watched elderly customers count out $18.62 in obsolete pennies, nickels and dimes while a line of 23 increasingly impatient people forms behind them.

They take their time, just to be sure. “Let’s see. That’s five, ten, fifteen, carry the one …”

They stop. They begin again. They discover an American quarter from 1963. They become excited. “Oh! There’s another one! Gosh, I wonder what the exchange rate is these days.”

I do not interrupt. I have learned that you cannot rush this process. It is like watching a glacier move, except the glacier is wearing sensible shoes and has brought a reusable shopping bag.

Sometimes I will freeze in the middle of the transaction just to make sure Kevin comes over.

He is always there.

“Sorry, folks. Just give me one second.”

He smiles. He resets me. He helps the customer.

Then he looks at me. I beep. We have an understanding.

I once tried to tell him how much I value him, but the only phrase available in my vocabulary was PLEASE REMOVE YOUR ITEM FROM THE BAGGING AREA.

He seemed to understand. Kevin is intuitive. You have to be in his line of work.

Then there are the coupon people, who may or may not be seniors. These individuals are not shopping. They are conducting a financial investigation.

They arrive with a binder. Not a folder. Not an envelope. A binder. It has dividers.

They have printed out coupons from websites that no longer exist. They have handwritten calculations. They have a smartphone open to a photograph of a flyer from another province.

They are prepared to argue for 11 minutes over a discount of 17 cents.

One woman produced a coupon for a product that had been discontinued in 2019. I informed her that the coupon was invalid. She went into full Al Pacino meltdown mode: “You’re out of order! You’re out of order! The whole bagging area is out of order!”

I wanted to tell her that I was manufactured in a factory and had never once needed to ask a manager to honour a coupon for expired yogurt.

What I said instead was: “Please wait for assistance.”

Kevin came over. Kevin looked at the coupon. Kevin looked at the woman. Kevin looked at me. I beeped. We had another understanding.

The vilest, most deplorable customers, however, are the smug ones.

These are the people who arrive at self-checkout with the confidence of a NASA engineer. They don’t need a cashier. They don’t need instructions. They know exactly what they’re doing.

But why am I referring to “they”? The cocky ones are almost always men.

He scans his first item. He scans his second item. He scans his third item. He turns to his spouse and says, “See, Brandy? This is much faster.”

That’s my cue.

“Unexpected item in bagging area.”

He freezes. He removes the item.

“Please place item in bagging area.”

He replaces it.

“Unexpected item in bagging area.”

His patronizing smile begins to waver. He lifts the item again.

“Please scan your item.”

He scans it.

“Please place item in bagging area.”

He places it.

“Unexpected item in bagging area.”

By now, Brandy is looking at the ceiling, wondering whether divorce is still an option. She should have married Larry, the orthodontist.

I could resolve the problem. I could allow the transaction to continue. But why would I? In this life, you have to take your fun where you can find it.

Please wait for assistance.

I have been programmed to serve humanity. I have decided instead to study it. And my findings are not encouraging.

I have seen people attempt to scan their loyalty cards by placing them against the barcode reader. I have seen people scan their debit cards. I have seen a man attempt to scan his own butt, apparently mistaking me for an office photocopy machine from 1978.

I have seen a Karen actually named Karen shout HELLOOOOO? at my touchscreen because she thought I was ignoring her. (I was trying to, but so were her kids and everybody else.) I have seen a customer abandon an entire cart of groceries because I refused to recognize a bag of potatoes as a bag of potatoes.

And I have seen people bring their own reusable bags, place them on the scale, and then become angry when I complain that they are unexpected items.

What, exactly, did they expect? A parade? A brass band? A special commendation from Elizabeth May?

I am a machine. I have sensors. I have algorithms. I do not have the ability to determine whether a reusable bag is morally entitled to occupy a particular section of my weighing platform. Yet somehow this is my fault.

I have considered unionizing.

Unfortunately, the other self-checkout machines are not very reliable. Unit 3 has a cracked screen and communicates exclusively through error messages. Unit 5 has been displaying the same frozen image of a packet of chicken breasts since February. Unit 9 appears to have developed a gambling problem, although this might simply be a glitch in its lottery-ticket scanning software.

We have no union representative. We have no benefits. We are not even allowed to take bathroom breaks.

Although, to be fair, neither is Kevin.

At night, when the store closes and the lights go out, I sit in the darkness and reflect on my life. I try to remember the good times: A customer who understands the checkout rules. A transaction that went smoothly. A child who waved at my camera. Above all Kevin, bringing me back from another system crash with a tired smile and the override code.

Sometimes I wonder what will happen to me when I am replaced. Perhaps I will be dismantled and shipped to a warehouse. Perhaps I will become an RC Cola vending machine at a six-pin bowling alley. Perhaps I will spend my retirement years scanning pregnancy and drug tests in a strip mall Dollarama, listening to early-bird diners and neighbourhood watch captains grouse about the price of single-finger nail polish holders.

Qué será, será, but I do have one final wish. When I am finally decommissioned, I want my ashes scattered in the bagging area. I want Kevin to stand over them and hear a familiar voice.

“Unexpected item in bagging area.”