Checking Me Out

I have a love-hate relationship with the self checkout section at the local supermarket.

It frequently enables me to avoid long lines, which I appreciate. When others wheel up to human cashiers with four-hundred-and-seventy-nine dollars worth of groceries shoved into their shopping carts and I have only three apples, two bags of Oreos and a tube of Preparation H, it is a wonderful thing to drift toward the self checkout machines. A few minutes scanning, jam the credit card into the chip reader, and off I go on my merry way with boodle in hand.

Utilizing self checkout also makes me feel smart.

I realize supermarket cashiers don't have to earn a degree from some institute of higher learning to run the cash registers, but many of them become so proficient they don't even need to refer to cheat sheets to know the code for my Envy apples is 4167. That's a skill I value which is why, at times when I do have enough items to warrant waiting for a human cashier, I spend less effort searching for the shortest line and more searching for the seasoned veterans. Mary on aisle 9 with her head down, a grunted "hello" and the weathered appearance of a middle-aged chain smoker will get you through that line a hell of a lot quicker than aisle 7's Jimmy, who just called for a manager because he's wasted five minutes trying to figure out how to charge by the pound for milk.

When using the self checkout stations, I strive to be like Mary. I approach with the sticker pulled off the apple and stuck to the back of my hand for easy reference. I inspect the Oreos the moment they come off the shelf so I know where the barcode is and I know how to hold them when running them over the scanner because I've watched the people ahead of me struggle like amateurs until they got it right. The same goes for the Preparation H. In. Scanned. Paid. Done, all so quickly accomplished I could represent the U.S. in self checkout Olympics.

Every now and then, you do come across troublesome machines.

Some have bad scanners. No matter what you do -- invert the package, flatten out the bar code, hold the bar code close up or far away, slam the can down hard enough to cause a crack in the Earth's mantle -- it won't make a difference. The register will still give you the "wrong answer" buzzer sound and ask you to try again.

Sometimes you get a screamer, usually on a very quiet morning. You walk up and punch in produce code 4167 for Envy apples and suddenly the skies open up and it sounds like God himself is telling you and the rest of the hearing world what to do with your fruit.

"WEIGH YOUR ENVY APPLES!"

There's no option at this point other than plugging your ears and forging ahead with the rest of your purchases.

"MOVE YOUR ENVY APPLES TO THE BAGGING AREA!"

"PREPARATION H IS NOW 2-FOR-1! DO YOU WISH TO PURCHASE A SECOND FAMILY-SIZE TUBE OF PREPARATION H?!"

Other times your machine has a faulty scale in the bagging area. You've weighed your Envy apples correctly, entered the number of bags of Oreos you're intending to purchase and confirmed that, no, you really don't need a gallon of hemmherhoid cream, only to find every time you attempt to bag your items the machine argues with you.

"PLEASE REMOVE THE UNSCANNED ITEM!"

"But I scanned the apples."

"PLEASE REMOVE THE UNSCANNED ITEM!"

"They're Oreos. The screen says Oreos, two packs, and that's what I put in the bag!"

"PLEASE REMOVE THE UNSCANNED PREPARATION H!"

"I scanned the *!#@! Preparation H!"

"PLEASE REMOVE THE UNSCANNED BUTT CREAM!"

"Shut Up!!!"

The final insult -- perhaps not quite as humiliating as publicly arguing with a hearing-impaired computer about my alleged quasi-medical issues -- comes when the machine begins questioning my age. It thinks, in its programmed mechanized way, that it's being nice to me when it asks if I qualify for the senior discount. What it doesn't realize is that I'm on the other side telling it to go do something with itself in ways that aren't even remotely possible.



2016 Mark Feggeler

Baby, Come Back!

I have struggled for years with the unavoidable truth. When a piece of your heart falls away into oblivion, you can find yourself adopting desparate measures to delay the inevitable realization that something precious is gone forever. Even as late as last night, I searched in vain for a substitute, a surrogate, anything to fill the empty space in my longing soul. Passing door after door, staring through the condensation-stained glass, I find nothing.

I come at last to the door that once led to the sweet delicacy for which I pine. Upon pulling the door to me, the residents of the unit present themselves and mock me with their wrappings, so eerily familiar yet so grotesquely different. Many voices sing, but no song reaches my ear.

Am I alone in my loneliness? Are there others who share my pain?

Turning to technology's collective voice, I search the name and scan through page after page of fruitless text until, at last, my suspicions are confirmed. Men and women alike have shared my desire, only to find themselves abandoned in the aisle. Cast adrift on an ocean of sameness, plucking unsavory satisfaction from the pretenders, we gather together on our virtual island to console each other with empty words.

An errant click of the finger pulls up the once glorious home on the glowing screen towering before me. The funny little surname arcs in a gentle curve on the striped awning that stretches along the top of the page. A strange assortment of offspring are on display, but none holds the appeal of that which is missing. The name is erased, the visage removed, my hopes abandoned.

For weeks to come, perhaps years, I will walk the desolate path through the freezer aisle of my local grocery store, clinging to the futile hope that I shall one day delight in the reappearance of my lost, my sweet, my Edy's Swiss Orange Sherbet.



© 2011 Mark Feggeler

Shopping For Dummies

My Lovely Wife and I have been married -- to each other -- for nearly 16 years.

In almost all that time, we have perpetuated a weekly ritual of grocery shopping to keep our cupboards stocked and our fridge full. That's close to 5,800 trips to the grocery store. You might think, with all that practice, we would have perfected the process by now. After all, our staples haven't changed much and our tastes in food seem to remain constant through the years.

So why do we spend the better part of each and every Friday struggling to come up with a complete shopping list? Are we suffering some weekly recurring form of dementia? Should it really come as a surprise to us that we need to buy milk and bread?

Every Friday brings the same conversation:

"Do we need toilet paper?" she asks.

"I don't know," I say.

"Do we need orange juice?" I ask.

"I don't know," she answers.

"Do you have cereal on the list?" she asks.

"No, I don't," I say. "That's a good one."

What the hell is wrong with us? We act like someone invented breakfast since the last time we went shopping and now, like monkeys throwing rocks at the moon, we have to figure it out.

And why do I have to ask if we need orange juice? I'm the only one who drinks it! No one else in our house could possibly be more knowledgeable about how much orange juice remains in the container, yet I don't know if we need more and I expect my Lovely Wife to tell me what I should already know!

It's like we go through our week using up all of our purchased goods and sundries, and then on Friday morning -- right before we sit down to make out our list -- we take "stupid" pills. We might have just finished a five pound jar of peanut butter five minutes earlier, yet we're still going to go back and forth for ten minutes trying to figure out if we need more.

And not only do we completely forget certain essentials -- like, say, food for instance -- we overpurchase other items that have no bearing on our lives in any way, shape or form. "Honey?! Why do we have seven boxes of Snausages?" Sure, we don't have any milk for breakfast or meat for dinner, but you can be darn certain the twelve-pound poodle has enough treats to last halfway through our next dog.

That's why I am going to approach this in a way that is logical and practical -- two words not often attributed to me.

I am going to sit one night at the computer and develop a master list of items we typically need, or at least should be checking to see if we need, each week. Then we can print it out each Friday and not have to rack our brains trying to remember all of the things we use every day.

Call it "shopping for dummies."



© 2010 Mark Feggeler