Caos en la Línea del Supermercado

You know, I love the self-checkout lane at Walmart. I use it pretty much every time I got shopping…and feel like the whole checking out experience goes ten times faster. I’ve got it down to a well honed craft, too. I whiz right through that line and I’m pushing buttons before the little computerized voice is even telling me to, and I’m all done in a freaking flash! Such a flash, in fact, that I tend to get a little impatient with obvious self-checkout first timers. I just want to run up and do it for them, as they stare at the screen and wonder what to do next.

That being said, I got hit with the humble stick today when I was rushing to check out so that I wouldn’t be late getting back from my lunch hour. Racing up to the only checkout that wasn’t occupied, I started scanning my stuff immediately, barely paying attention to the screen. I’m all about speed, you know. Well, in case you aren’t familiar with the glory of self-checkouts, there ARE some things you can’t scan in. Produce for example. Bakery items. With these, you just touch the on screen button that says “look up item” and find whatever you’re buying on the screen. Again, I’m a total whiz with this. At least, I usually am, until I look up and notice that the screen, and all of its buttons, are in Spanish.

Um…

It’s not like the buttons were in different places. It’s not like the screen didn’t look exactly like it does when it’s in English…but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember WHICH button to push to look up the item. Like…where it was on the screen. And there are, obviously, several buttons to choose from. I swear I can usually do this in my sleep! But not in Spanish. Ugh. So…I took a gamble. And totally pushed the wrong button. A button that took me into some weird screen I’ve never seen. I tried really hard to push some other buttons to back out of there, but to no avail. And of course, two seconds hadn’t passed before the kindly old Walmart worker, who stands at the top of the self-checkout area to oversee them, came over to solve my problem. I think the position could be eliminated by a simple “back” button on the screen. But no…that would be too easy. Instead, when people mess up, something goes off on their terminal that says, “Great…the idiot at register #2 has screwed up royally. Go swipe the card hanging from your lanyard, push random buttons on the screen for a while, and make sure they feel good and stupid before you leave.”

So…smug “I’ll fix your issue” lady comes over. And I say to her as she’s walking toward me, “Hey, I just pushed the wrong button…I didn’t realize this was a Spanish terminal.” She looked at me like I was a crazy person. She came around to face the screen, and then looked up, totally dumbfounded. “I don’t speak Spanish,” she said. Well…super. So…instead of me pushing random buttons trying to get out of there, SHE was doing it. And I swear…she had no idea what she was doing. You could just tell. All the while, I was turning into that self-checker-outer that I hate…who holds everyone else in the store up. Ugh! FINALLY she swiped her little card, and it went back to the right screen. I KNEW it. All that random button pushing is just for show.

Anyway…once she had it fixed, she just stood there, watching me. Like I would want HER help ever again. Sheesh. After assuring her that I could muddle through without her, she finally went away. I chose the right button…I found my item…and finally checked out…promising myself that, in the future, I will never start scanning again until I’m SURE that the machine is speaking my language.