Self Check Out

There's nothing more in the whole world than the incessant buzzing of fluorescent lights, heinous-blue employee vests and screaming babies that make me want to double click the mouse.

I was at Wal Mart and cruising through the overly polished aisles. It smelled of dirty cash money, floor cleaner, cheap perfume and old French Fries. I only popped in for a minute and immediately started scanning for a few items. A few items that I'd rather get any place but here. But again and again consumers, such as myself, are sucked back into the warehouse of cheap goods where they carry everything you need and everything you don't need. I wandered around for just a few minutes. I grabbed my health bars from one side of the store, work appropriate black socks from the middle, and then hit up the other side for some low calorie pita bread. I could carry all my items in my arms and I headed towards the front.
Suddenly, three disheveled children accosted me. They were in a familial frenzy and I took a jerky step back. One's face had been stained with a red tint that was probably the remnants of too many hours of cheap red Kool Aid being guzzled down in front of the tube. The child who I assumed was his kid brother has donned an incredibly stained white transformer t-shirt, which was suckling too tightly around an oversized child pot-belly. An older sister was trying to shoo them around me to avoid a collision on the juice aisle. I sucked in a deep breath and pushed it out, closing my eyes, hoping she would succeed. Her chipping pink nails grabbed each one of them and blasted out some command at a rapid-fire speed. Their eyes went wide, one tripped on his untied shoe lace and they both scampered off searching for their mothers’ over sized cart stuffed full of processed chips, pop tarts, cheap cereal and Hawaiian Punch.

While at the giant shopping center you never know which type of human you will encounter and what random and capricious encounters you will have. I, myself, never know what to expect upon stepping foot in a Wal Mart shopping center. This particular time was no different, bulbs flashed off and on. Some fizzled and stayed out, another was slapped by a teenage employee popping her gum and it grabbed on to a few more seconds of life as a beacon for the next shopper ready to check out.

I only had a few items, and really would rather not deal with any more dim-witted, incompetent blank stares. I thought about buying a blue vest so I could walk right on out of the store without a single glance. However, I thought I would get bombarded by the hoards of people who think they know what they're looking for when they really just need you to tell them what to buy; what to buy; what to order and how to do it. I wasn’t in the mood to take on such a task, so the idea of purchasing blend-in blue camouflage quickly vanished.

My eyes scanned for an available self checkout counter. The four that are so often empty were jammed with people. There was a hodge-podge of android shoppers, all going through the motions, treating each individual item as if it were the most important artifact in the world as they dragged it across the scanner. It registered the bar code and beeped an erroneous amount of times. My game was to choose which one of the four creatures would fulfill their shopping duties the quickest, which then I would swoop in and finish up my shopping.

Who would it be? Player number one? Player number one was a set of high school girls. They were both clad in workout clothes and with them they carried only their keys, phones and wallets. They were both overly tan and overly fit and wore brand new expensive Nike gym shoes. However, the gym look seemed to be a masquerade because I suddenly felt deceived as I noticed what they were buying, or intending to buy rather. They were both pushing the touch screen computer at the same time and their eyes went back and forth between each other and the dummy-proof screen so blankly I wondered if they were high. The items they had picked out were a box of Jelly filled doughnuts, a half carton of milk, two boxes of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, a pint of Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia ice cream, a boxed frozen pizza and a 2-liter of Diet Coke. Either they were getting over a severed heart or were planning the binge and purge of the year. Either way I discarded them as potential winners in the "do-it- yourself-and-fast-as-you-can-game".

Contestant numero dos was just past the two girls and I decided this would definitely NOT be the winner. It was the family from before, from the encounter on the juice aisle, with the belly blubbering mom and it seemed they had collected a few more children. My gaze fixated on this family for the longest time. I felt as if I were slowly passing by a car wreck. I just couldn't look away. I felt frozen and my eyes got big and my top lip slowly curled up. I wasn’t exactly sure how to process what it was that I was in fact really seeing. Don't judge a book by it’s cover filtered through my head. The dad was the smallest member of the family. He had on a wife beater, dark baggy blue jeans and a blank frozen expression. His body was physically standing at the end of the counter, but his brown eyes were two counters away. He was fixated on the two high school girls still trying to feed the cash machine with a credit card, but his eyes weren't on what they were buying or their lack of computer screen knowledge, if you know what I mean. He clutched two plastic bags stuffed full of Dos Equis. Swarming around him were 6 children all under the age of 12. There may have even been two sets of twins. They were tugging on their mother, chattering away and ripping chip bags open. She was pushing a massively full shopping cart in front of her. Bigger than her whole family put together she was fixin' to ask the attendant on duty where the button for WIC coupons was. I didn't want to stick around and witness the conversation they would attempt to have while the blue-vested employee tried to explain, that first of all food stamps wouldn't pay for the beer and there wasn't a button to run the coupons through the machine.

My eyes scanned counter clock wise and landed on player number three. He was a tall male, with a black trench coat on. He had so few items there was no need for a basket or cart. My eyes lit up, this could be it.

Quickly I glanced at the remaining self checkout counter, a mom and daughter buying a good array of meal making grub. I shuffled over to cloak-man and waited patiently. It wouldn't take long, as he was scanning the last of his three items, a bottle of sleeping pills. I noticed his other items were probably chosen very carefully, carefully and with much discretion. His murky eyes flicked left, then right, he selected pay now, inserted his debit card and with practiced precision, slid the items into a bag. Almost completely undetected he left the store with his head down and black combat boots stopping down remnants of dirt.

It was finally my time, time for the self-check out. Time for the self sufficient, "do it yourself" self-servicing, that more companies and stores should have installed. There is no middle-man nor any other party involved, feigning interest or messing up. I was in charge now. I could slide the goods across the belt as fast or slow as I wanted. Of course I always go fast. I like it fast. I like going fast. I am a firm believer that everything should be done as fast as possible, as fast as possible, but with efficiency. By all means I say go slow if it means a better final outcome, but please never get off task. This was reminding me of something. I was in charge of an interaction that usually occurs between two parties. Often when you're in an upscale store with pricey imported items, the clerk may be a lot more knowledgeable on the product for sale and you will need his services to assist you through the servicing ritual. In times when you find yourself in dire straits a capable second party is key to finishing. Finishing what you may have started.

What was this all reminding me of?
An interaction, which usually manifests with two people (sometimes more than two, three is common), but sometimes it could rise up to 4 or 5 if there is a problem and the manager is needed. An interaction of servicing, exchanging monetary substance for goods and the client always leaves happy, mostly happy. If not happy, the customer leaves AT LEAST satisfied. But now with modern technology and an open mind, involving openness and self-sufficiency, we can do it alone.

MASTURBATION! It was all about masturbation. This whole “servicing ritual” was reminding me of rubbing one out and giving myself an annihilating orgasm. Better than any third party provider could muster up anyhow. How on earth could such a plastic, dirty and irritating place, full of a thousand people, make me think of such a self-pleasing exercise? But it made sense: self checkout is EXACTLY what it's named after.

A cashier may know about generic customer service skills, and can say the habitual "just waiting for my day off" feel-good line. A cashier may eliminate more work for you, but in the long run when your items are bagged wrong, you were charged twice for a box of tampons and your change was a questionable, the journey through self checkout was totally worth the extra 23 second wait. You can go in, slide your shit, hit the button, and be done with it, going as slow or fast as desired. Always finishing up, avoiding obligated interaction, and moving along your merry way to attack the next obstacle in life.
I started with my hand going down on myself. Gosh, it’s so good when you control it all. I gasped a little bit as I seduced my health bars across the scanner and a grown up giggle escaped my o’ing mouth as my black socks fell into the deep dark shopping bag. I was so impressed with how smooth I could check myself out. God, I’m good at this. I needed to do it again. I “accidentally” scanned my pita pockets twice, just so I could take it back and forth a bit more. I wanted to push a few more buttons and to feel my pita pocket more. The pockets made the machine beep and beep again. Everything is bagged and I was about to gyrate in a euphoric dance and shriek out a couple of Hail Mary’s.
“Please select payment type or insert cash”.
Ooooooo, I had to breathe out to calm myself as the robot tried to interrupt.
“Do you have any coupons?”
NO! NO! Again and NO! But the yes was coming because I was about to PAY NOW!
I pulled out. I pulled out my debit card and my eyelids fluttered. I slid the card at just the right speed and then, it asked me, for my pin.
Ooooooo, the pin! I tapped it. I tapped in the pin and almost couldn’t take it anymore. It asked if I wanted cash back and I almost exploded, finally……my transaction was complete. Out came the receipt.
Oooooo, the receipt. It slipped out, white and clean and fluttered around. My insides were flickering along with the fluorescent lights and I acknowledged the transaction was complete. It was just so quick and easy. I grabbed my bag, smoothed my hair and nonchalantly looked around. I didn’t have to make any awkward unsolicited small talk or lay on any false compliments about the quality of someone’s service. Maybe next time I’d get a few more items, split up my payments and have an orgy.
I was still on a delirious high when I exited the store. The doors swooshed open and I was blasted with a rush of 89% humidity. My racy experience with self checkout was making my temperature flourish into the heights of after-orgasm-execution. Wal Mart shopping and Texas heat; what could be hotter? Even the sweat beads that had formed on the back of my neck made me want to do some more Wally World shopping and service myself at the end. I had departed the monopolizing corporation and left the beep-beeps behind me and silently dodged a low riding beat up Honda with tinted windows and some curvy text on the back window. An all too familiar scent wafted from the windows. I wondered how those customers would be servicing today, either self-service or would they be getting moderately taken care of by a middle-aged woman with chunky plastic earrings and yellow stained teeth?

I looked to the left. The blond woman on her telephone who had to slam on her breaks to keep her huge black SUV from hitting me had no idea she could make such a beneficial and rapid switch up. A small shuffle to the right and she could change average height, average build, semi-funny, slow, balding John Doe for a quick and proficient affair with herself.