For the first time in months, I decided not to use the self checkout machine at the supermarket today. The clerk looked lonely.
I loaded my groceries onto the conveyor belt and stood there as he scanned and bagged them. I felt strange, just watching him; felt bad for him, as if I was asking too much. A once weekly ritual now seemed like a luxury, an imposed request, like asking someone to help me lift something heavy.
The clerk scanned my corn chips, my Toblerone, played indifferent witness to my guilty pleasures. I suddenly felt vulnerable.
He asked me how my day had been, what I’d been up to and what I might do later. I didn’t remember these teller/customer conversations typically going further than the perfunctory, ‘how you going?’ so I wondered if his gregariousness was personal or commercial. Had he been instructed to be chatty, to differentiate his human services from the computer scanner three aisles over?
“Oh, not much,” I said. “Bit of cooking, you know.” I gestured to the rest of the groceries he was bagging. He nodded.
I imagined I would soon exchange these same banalities with the scanner.
– Yannick