By Ted Nyman

a rant: fuck 'unexcepted item in bagging area'

FUCK 'UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA' by Ted Nyman

You may have encountered self-checkout machines at Safeway stores or other fine middle-brow groceries throughout this nation and perhaps even the world. You bring up your Frosted Flakes, Odwalla, whatever, run through them a barcode detection thingy, pay via machine, and then bag your groceries yourself. Like a boss. Now, some people prefer this manner of checkout because it's often faster that using traditional aisles. Personally I like it because it means I usually don't have to talk to anyone at the grocery store, which is one of my main objectives in daily life.

However, there is one serious problem with the machines. And let me tell you: this fault is not just a fucking annoyance -- it's also a terrible UI fault. Yes, shoppers, you know what I'm talking about: "UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA".

First, there is no consistency to this error message (which is spoken aloud to you in a pleasant female voice). Not even eventual consistency. I scan my Oreos, put in the bagging area, and everything is fine. Then I scan some Kraft pepper jack cheese (successfully it seems), put the pepper jack cheese in the bagging area -- and all hell breaks loose. UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA. UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA. I look around, embarrassed at my terrible inability to correctly scan and bag my items. Then some moderately attractive chick wearing yoga pants gives me a look of scorn: "I wonder if that guy even WENT TO COLLEGE, he can't even operate a self-checkout machine!!" An older woman shakes her head in dismay; shit, even the fat dude in sweatpants buying 30 cans of Chunky Campbell's Soup looks at me as if I was Pol Pot.

But here's the stupidest fucking part of all. None of this even matters. Nine times out of ten, the machines keeps functioning correctly, despite the error message. And the one time it doesn't, all I have to do is get the pothead who runs the self-checkout area to tap a button on his keyboard to reactive the machine. The whole thing is fucking pointless.

-- ted nyman http://ted.io