The Great Supermarket Injustice: Self-Checkout Lines and the Invertebrates Who Love Them

(Ode to the Cashier – Vol 1.)

Who did this?!

In the age of Artificial Intelligence, why have we so boldly chosen genuine stupidity?

Whoever came up with this genius idea deserves a place in the nine-and-a-halfth layer of hell, where they will be beaten with socks full of raw okra for eternity.

We all know this wasn’t for better “customer service”—it was just to make the shareholders some extra lunch money at the expense of the proletariat’s remaining sanity.

Scanners that work, weight detectors that don’t—and they got the same robotic voice you hear when you call the cable company yelling at you. As if your blood pressure wasn’t already spiking after hearing “Please clear the bagging area!” for the 15th time when all you wanted was your $15 eggs and a thoroughly shrinkflated box of cereal.

12 machines during prime-time shopping, and you already know they only got Kevin holding it down.

Here’s to you, Kevin! Bro is on his third wife and third bypass, but he’s doing the best he can for $2 above minimum wage.

Makes you wonder what this poor bastard did in a past life to deserve this punishment. His shift has to feel like getting Eiffel Towered by two rhinos for eight hours—between management who hasn’t given a solitary shit in 40 years and customers freshly infuriated by the machine breaking down every third item.

12 machines.

2 cashiers.

16 lanes, yet only two of them are open.

Lines so long you’d think you were at Disney with the budget pass during summer vacation. Empires have risen, empires have fallen, and by the time you reach Brenda—the poor cashier wielding her register with numb efficiency—your $5.59 gallon of milk has already turned into hairy cottage cheese.

Brenda, who has been scanning your haul with a thousand-yard stare, having reached maximum dissociation 15 minutes into her shift.

By the time you reach her, she’s wondering which configuration of the Lamentation Cube will offer her the fastest release from this Cenobite-inspired hell.

She doesn’t even have a chair.

No.

Chair.

This belongs in the Tower of London’s lowest level.

If your so-called job makes you stand for that long with no chair?
You should revolt.

Torches and pitchforks, baby. Use Return of the Jedi (VI) as the template! Hell, invite the Ewoks too!

Sack the management suite, steal their cushy lower lumbar-supporting chairs, burn the self-checkout, and go home vindicated.

You may not be their father, but that day, you’ll make them call you Daddy.

- RC