Love Bites: Checking Out

My local supermarket closes early one evening in November. They're putting more self-checkouts in. When it reopens, I discover that the checkout area has been expanded, and the space where flower bouquets and magazines once lived is now occupied by machines. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love to limit the number of times I have to talk to other people as much as the next guy, but I do wonder about all the things we’ve sacrificed in the name of convenience. 

I think about being a kid and eating bread rolls from the grocery store while still shopping, then apologetically asking the cashier to mark up what I’d consumed on my way to the checkout. I think about saying ‘you too’ at the wrong times, the weather-related exchanges, the small smiles I share with the cashier at the shop I’ve been going to for years.

Maybe it’s silly to hyperfixate on a machine as innocent as a self-checkout, in a world where actual robots and superintelligent computers are commonplace. But do they not ultimately stem from the same logic? A logic that supposedly makes our lives easier by eliminating those clunky, slow, awkward human encounters. A logic that isolates. 

The truth is, as the dark sets in and I get the annual urge to hibernate, what I secretly crave most is those little interactions with strangers. It’s the sensation of reaching out beyond yourself; a reminder that you exist, and that others exist too. Life should be uncomfortable or unpredictable sometimes – that’s what makes it real. 

Before they get rid of human checkouts completely (although I’m hopeful that they won’t), I’m resolving to make 2026 my year of inconvenience. It’s nice to take the long way round sometimes.