Tuesday, July 01, 2008

When I Rule The World

The thirteenth item, and any subsequent items brought to the express checkout lane, will not be sold to you. It doesn't matter what that item is, or how important it is to you, relative to the first twelve items scanned. The machine will not accept it. The grocer (who, when I rule the world, shall be a robot) will politely inform you that he or she is very sorry, but this is the "12 items or fewer" isle, and they cannot sell you any more than that. You'll have to go get in line in one of those other isles.

Despite its apparent charm, and its being programmed to speak with a British accent (current grocery store scanning robots, with their obnoxious Star Trek computer voice, will be no more), the robot will not change its mind based on the fact that you are a charming elderly woman, who in no way will remind it of its robot grandmother (who I guess might be very much like the Star Trek computer-voiced checkout machines of today).

You will then be sent on your way, perhaps with a pamphlet explaining the importance of the grocery store maintaining its credibility with regards to the express checkout isle, and that had the robot sold you the 13th through 25th items as you had wanted it to, this would have been horribly unfair to the people in line behind you, who were adhering to the store's policies regarding the express checkout lane.

Won't that be nice?

4 comments:

Unknown said...

YES! YES! YES!

YESYESYESYESYESYESYES!!!

YEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just cannot stand people who do that. They are knowingly being complete assholes.

I read once that being consistently late to meet with people is selfish because you are saying that your time is more important than the time of the people with whom you are supposed to be meeting. The checkout thing is exactly the same.

Robert Lynch said...

I totally misread that the first time, so I had to read it again. At first I was like, "why is the Republic in support of people going over the 12 item limit?" Then I realized I was just stupid, and that the Republic wasn't stupid, and the post was much more amusing then.

D.Cous. said...

Hmm... So you're saying that I can't use this as an excuse for being late for things? Perhaps I've said too much.

L. H. Lynch said...

I used to have nice people in Germany step aside and let me go ahead of them in line when they saw that I only had a couple of chocolate bars compared to their grocery cart. Germany does not have express check-out lanes. If they did, I am pretty sure no one with more than twelve items would ever go through them. Germans are like that.