Why I (Still) Won’t Use Self-Service

People like self-service machines. The trajectory here is as obvious as it is inevitable, and one day soon I could even come across think pieces on the good old days of the humble self-service check out, in the same way I consistently find social media posts on the much-loved, still bafflingly available noughties favourite Myspace.

I do occasionally use self-service machines in various places, so I apologise now for the misleading title of this piece that instead forms a general personal philosophy on something I understand to be objectively true: small talk with strangers is a wonderfully stimulating thing. Not with acquaintances or street friends of course, I’m not a madman. Here the wheat has already been sorted from the chaff and the small talk didn’t ever lead to any deeper, nourishing big talk. Small talk is a must with complete strangers, however, needing to start somewhere and fizzing with the unexpected, with the chance to discover something entirely new about the world and a sense of dizzying possibility.

When younger, I could only see the dehumanising effect on the person sat trapped at the end of the conveyor belt of endless, brightly packaged stuff. Recalling my time in the midst of a similar onslaught in a car parts factory and the subsequent deadening of the mind, the cashier’s dead eyes barely seemed able to distinguish one colour from another as if operating in the near dark. Until I began to notice those who defied this much more public task in a unique and even at times flamboyant way. Standing up, for instance, where the others stayed slumped in their static chairs. Sometimes flinging items toward a rude customer struggling at the deep end of the stainless steel pool of goods or explaining casually to someone why they won’t up their bip-per-second rate as management has decreed, or speaking to a customer well after the transaction has taken place, refusing to heed the impatient glare of the line.

Nothing interesting or intriguingly unusual could ever happen at a self-service check out, so why bother? The only kind of interaction here from the staff member looking over multiple tills is either apologetic or harassed. I am over 18. There isn’t an unexpected item. The offer said 2 for £4. Spot the chocolate pastry twist button… What kind of joyless game is this?

Some of the cashiers respond to a casual question with an understandable dismissiveness, whilst others seem to come alive. I always try and avoid the cashier I’m familiar with and stand in any size queue to inch toward a new face. Except when the people making up the queues in uncomfortably close proximity with large filled trolleys interfere as happened recently, taking in my infuriating presence and perceivable items in the basket. Browbeaten as others looked on, waiting for my response to the denouement, “Unless you like waiting in queues or something?” I trudged over to the self-service tills with other basket-holders, as suggested, unable to respond that not only would it not be quicker, and that I wasn’t particularly in any rush, but most of all I was robbed of the one moment of true magic that happens nearly every time.

When we have moved into a truly automated shopping experience, future generations will never know, care or understand that at the very moment the cashier hands over the receipt, they will look at you directly in the eye with a fleeting, hypnotic concentration. Taking the receipt, freed from needing anything further from one another and holding their gaze equally as you thank this person, a feeling of rare honesty about adult communication will surface as you wonder about one another, grasping something of their inner world and personality in a kind of revelatory slow rush of time.

For this potent human moment, I’ll queue for as long as it takes.