Checkout the Checkouts

I don’t like the robot checkouts. No one really does. You give in to them because time is short and life is dull. You stand in a line behind people who can’t find the barcodes, and you think about the old days when someone else did the work. But now it’s just you and the machine.

The rich don’t wait. They don’t line up with a basket and a few cans of beans. They make rules about “efficiency” and “savings” and someone somewhere gets richer. You just want to get home.

Aldi is best. Small, tight, quick. The barcodes are large and true. Everything scans first time. The people there are steady, fast, and silent. The machine doesn’t talk. It works. You feel something clean and sharp in that.

Tesco is a mess. Always noise, always too much. Staff talking, lights flashing, alarms for things that don’t matter. They sell too much of everything. You stand there, waiting for help that never comes. Machines talk sometimes, but not all of them. The fridges have doors now. Whose idea was that? The place feels tired and greedy.

Morrisons is nothing. Not bad. Not good. Just there. You can buy bread that looks fresh. You probably won’t.

Co-op has a strange machine that beeps in odd ways. It talks like a man from the west of Scotland. You hear it every day and it grates on you. Still, it works. It’s quick.

Boots is hell. No one is ever at the till. You try to buy something simple, and it becomes hard. You give up.

M&S is fine. The machines are tall, the baskets have nowhere to go. You lift things higher than feels right. Someone designed it without ever buying food.

B&Q is not a supermarket but it feels like one run by men who’ve forgotten what shopping is. Sometimes you do it yourself, sometimes a man in orange helps. If you’re behind someone buying pipes and plaster, you suffer.

Lidl is like Aldi’s scruffy brother. The bread is good. The machines work. Sometimes they sell peanut butter with jam already mixed in. That’s something.

Asda is solid. Plain. The kind of place you go when you just want to eat. Their meal deals make sense, unlike Tesco’s. Tesco’s make you want to walk into the sea.

Waitrose is another world. I went once. Paid a man. The bread was good.

Maybe I’ve drifted from the point. But it’s my space to drift in.

Next time: which of these fine systems can be fooled the easiest.