The line moved steadily forward as the queue of people shuffled along like some gigantic centipede dragging all of its heels simultaniously. Children dressed in rags milled about lawlessly through crowds of cackling mothers whilst fathers stood stoically looking somewhere into the distance, painful memories of toil would occasionally wash over their faces and they would briefly lower their head with tears in their eyes.
The queue was designed to sap life, degrade, torment and control the population, there was no getting away from it, all the other exits were closed this was the only way through. It was policed by one guard who snapped and pointed at one of four possible destinations, bags were searched at random, items were split from packaging on the lookout for stolen goods being concealed within. One elderly woman could take no more, she threw down her bag and pushed her way past the guard uttering gutteral oaths only to be caught by a second waiting behind the heavily guarded security desk. We saw her no more, she was ushered off shouting and screaming and then there was silence as if a savage blow had silenced her plea's.
Soviet Russia has nothing on the Orwellian self service checkout yesterday at my local DIY store. Queues, shouts, screams, they were all real, the level of control these superstores now place on the consumer is beyond belief. Self service checkouts are a blight, they remove us from contact with fellow humans, they help us lose compassion for our fellow man. Yesterday the old lady I mentioned above was having serious trouble understanding the concept of the self checkout whilst trying to buy a few plants, she was from a different age that much was apparent by I also saw something else, a deep panic that I see time and time again in people, a panic that is unable to cope with modern life and the speed at which it changes. Think about how different things are now compared to say ten years ago. Did you do most of your shopping online then? Did you control your bank account, pay bills, switch electricity and gas suppliers, have fifty passwords for fifty sites, use Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, have TV on demand, watch streaming movies, read novels, share photos, music and video using a cloud all online?
No, most of the boom has also been our decline. That old lady realised that yesterday, she didn't fit anymore. Our fast paced way of life had pulled away from her and she couldn't cope. The assistant was too busy sorting out the other shoppers problems like the lack of barcodes or items that needed to remain in the basket to really show any kind of concern that maybe, just maybe there are people in this world that have never used a self service checkout before and are quite frankly overwhelmed.
Before I get all spouty about it lets lighten the mood and change the subject to the only time I had visited the DIY store and actually went to a manned till. It was only a few weeks ago but I remember it well as the checkout lady was drunk. No, really, she was off her trolley, so much so we had to wrestle the scanning device from her hands and scan our own stuff through whilst she looked on through rheumy eyes, slowly swaying with our arm movements. We had to be patient whilst she tried to use the credit card machine and we picked up various objects she had dropped along the way, it took a while and we had to listen intently to understand what was said. We left her swaying, looking like anytime now she was going to hurl on a customer or at the very least pass out. That's the thing about self service checkouts, where on earth are you going to get service like that?
Top tip for today, don't go to a DIY superstore on a Bank Holiday, it's hells waiting room.
www.petersmithcollective.co.uk Home Of Foreverbunny and the Impossimals
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