Ahhh, technology. Wonderful stuff! We live in a world where if you need money, you put a little card in a wall somewhere and out pops cash from your bank half a world away; all in the span of a minute or so. Remember those days when you had to write a check for everything? Since the advent of Debit Cards, I haven’t written a check in nearly 5 years and Boy Howdy, do I love it.

Unfortunately, there is a dark side to all this new fangled equipment rearing its ubiquitous head. No, I’m not speaking of flesh eating robots or a bleak future of human enslavement by our BTU guzzling machine masters. No, I speak of a situation far more frustrating; people everywhere stymied by simple progress in convenience technology.

Take for example those wonderful self-check out isles you now see in supermarkets. This, my friends, was a wonderful idea. Grab your grub, whip into the check-out lane, scan your items, swipe your card and you are done! No meaningless banter with a cashier, no half-assed justifications why you don’t have a “savings” card, no nothing! Get, swipe, pay, leave!

Ahhh, but here’s the rub. There is always someone occupying at least one of these precious lanes with that ‘deer caught in the headlights’ look. I recognize them right off. They are the ones who have product in hand but are not quite sure what to do with it. First they look at the product, then the scanner, then the product, then the scanner, then the glance around for some kind of help. Back to the product, then the scanner. Finally, even though food scanners have been out for a millennia and this person has probably watched this process done a thousand times, the customer tries to swipe the product over the scanner.

Nothing

And the process starts all over again. Product, scanner, product, scanner, product, scanner. Swipe. Nothing. Product, scanner, product, scanner. Swipe. BEEP! Yeah! Product, belt, product, belt, product, belt…..

These are the moments when you just want to go up to the guy and do the computer guy thing from Saturday Night Live. “MOVE!!!” Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. “Give me your credit card!” Beep! “Pin Number” Beep Beep Beep Beep. “GET OUT!”.

Ladies and Gentlemen, as frustrating as that is, it is nothing compared to the people you meet at the movie theater trying to get tickets from the kiosk. But, I think I’ll leave that story to Eric. He’s had much more experience than I on that matter.