Every so often, you have to go shopping. It isn’t that you WANT to go shopping. You HAVE to to shopping.
The shopping cart’s front right wheel thumps and pulls, oddly enough, to the left.
The produce is either ripe to the point of rotting or so green that it needs another week to be edible.
The items on the list are out of stock but there are plenty of other things you find that you never knew you needed but now cannot live without. You came to the store for a toothbrush and bananas. You are leaving with powdered milk and sushi rolls.
But the shopping experience hasn’t even reached its most troubling point until you prepare to “check out”. You are no longer allowed to step into an lane and allow a qualified, all-be-it, underpaid checker to finish the shopping transaction. Now you have to do the work yourself.
U-Scans are from the devil. There. I’ve said it and I feel better. Now that their origins have been established, we can talk about their evils. First, every third item has to have approval from the one person who manages the six stations. Second, alcohol sales all require approval from someone other than the person who manages the six stations because that person is too young to provide the secret alcohol pass code. Third, every item must be placed on the specially calibrated scales after being scanned and approved. Unfortunately, your scales are calibrated to one of the other U-Scan lanes, and their scale is calibrated to yours. Your can of tuna must weigh the same as a 5 pound sack of flour or you are prevented from scanning any other items, until a manager is brought to the U-Scan Island to agree that you in fact are scanning a can of tuna.
Finally, you have a cart of groceries that all have to fit on the scales that are actually bathroom scales disguised by plastic grocery sacks. Two gallons of milk and a box of kitty litter fill the platform. You are not allowed to remove any of your items or your scanning experience ends. If you want to add a jar of pickles and a pound of hamburger, you must contact a district manager who will verify that you can remove one gallon of milk. And only one gallon of milk.
Before you can pay, you have to scan all your coupons, provide picture I.D., submit to a full body search, a chest x-ray and a nasal swab.
The shopping took 10 minutes. The check-out took an hour and a half.
