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Robin Swoboda: If you want to be embarrassed, scan your frequent shopping card now

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The line was growing longer as the female voice got louder. With each incessant demand, my face turned a deeper shade of red. With a look of despair, I silently appealed to the people waiting behind me, but each one either refused to make eye contact or, if they did, they just shrugged their shoulders and looked away.

The man wearing the World’s Best Grandpa sweatshirt muttered “idiot” under his breath, while his grip on the cart tightened revealing thick, white knuckles.

“Please scan your frequent shopper card now.”

I began to perspire as I once again focused on the daunting task before me.

“PLEASE SCAN YOUR FREQUENT SHOPPER CARD NOW!!!!” she yelled.

But I had scanned it. Over and over, in fact, before she finally accepted it.

The next command she barked was “Please take your item out of the bagging area and scan your first item. … PLEASE TAKE YOUR ITEM OUT OF THE BAGGING AREA AND SCAN YOUR FIRST ITEM.”

“I did scan it, lady! Just like I scanned my frequent shopper card about seven times before you finally saw it. Which one of us is the idiot?” I said, looking at the man with the white knuckles and the sweatshirt that proved he was lovable to somebody.

“Please wait for assistance.”

Now she sounded plain exasperated and the increasingly large crowd behind me collectively sighed as the light overhead flashed its yellow distress signal.

It was at this moment that I promised myself that I will never, ever, ever use the self-checkout at the grocery store again.

“Idiot,” I hear behind me, as the 17-year-old kid arrives to reboot the system.

What is it about me? I see others breeze right through but when I try, it’s harder than going through the consular staff to get into Russia with a case of vodka.

I’ve never done well at tests and I feel like each trip through the self-checkout is a test, which always results in my public humiliation. For that reason I usually go to the checkout lanes with the bona fide cashiers, but in case the lines are too long, I make sure that my basket is full of stuff with giant bar codes and absolutely no produce.

Produce can kill you.

Well, bananas are okay. They usually have a bar code on them and even if they don’t, you know what they are, unlike onions, potatoes and lettuces, which have too many varieties.

Once, while trying to figure out whether I was buying snow peas, snap peas or garden peas, a lady in line behind me got so angry she hurled a head of lettuce at the back of my head. (Don’t ask me what kind but it could have been butter lettuce.)

I don’t know why I even try these self-checkouts anymore other than to give cashiers the satisfaction of knowing there are people like me who give them job security. Or maybe it’s because I thrive on moments that take my breath away, and I am too afraid to sky dive.

Whatever it is, technology has always baffled me and it’s getting worse. Just looking through the Best Buy circular in today’s paper gives me a headache. Going into the actual store makes my knees knock and breaks me out in a cold sweat.

T.I. (technology ignorance) is in my DNA.

Shortly after I moved to Cleveland in 1986 to anchor the 6 and 11 p.m. news for WJW, my mom came for a visit. I was living in the old Westlake Hotel in Rocky River, which had been converted into condominiums.

Mom had spent her whole life in the small Missouri town I grew up in but I was extremely cosmopolitan, having lived in the metropolis of Davenport, Iowa, for several years, and Miami the year prior. I was anxious to show her the big city of Cleveland and all its sights and wonders.

However, she was the anxious one when I came home around midnight the first night of her visit.

“Robin, I saw the strangest movie on TV tonight,” she said. “It was silent, it was in black and white and it didn’t have a very good plot. It must be one of those avant-garde movies I’ve read about.”

Curled up with a cup of coffee, because my mom could drink coffee at any hour, she described the plot in detail.

“In the first scene, there was a room. It was empty but once in a while, you’d see a male or a female character walk in, stand for a minute or two and then disappear. Then, it would switch to another black and white scene of a different room and door. Usually, nothing happened in this scene but once in awhile, you’d see a different character go out.

“I was fascinated by it because I kept thinking something exciting was going to happen but it never did. No wonder it’s on late night TV. It’s a terrible movie.”

“Mom, on what channel did you see this?” I asked.

She grabbed the remote, scanning down until she came to channel 2.

“See? It’s still on,” she said, shaking her head.

“Mom, that’s not a movie. That’s the live streaming security cameras at the front and back doors of the building. Just how long did you watch it?”

She never did tell me, but we laughed for what seemed like an hour.

As I was driving home from my most recent grocery store debacle last week, I laughed out loud when I thought about that night. I wonder what the World’s Greatest Grandpa would have done.

He’d probably mutter, “Idiots.”

Robin Swoboda’s column runs every other week. Contact her at Robinswoboda@outlook.com.


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