...who was visiting from Los Angeles. It's a new market oriented less at the moms amongst us who shop weekly for a large family but more toward the weekender and too-busy-to-cook type who picks up just what is needed for dinner along with a bottle of wine. It's small but handy since the next closest store is another eight miles distant, and they generally have one of everything plus a lot of unusual "gourmet" items. As part of their low-impact model, they only have two cashier lanes of which most of the time only one is manned, and there are four self-checkout stands which I prefer to waiting on a human.
Apparently self check-out stands are not yet a fad in Thousand Oaks, California, where Annabelle lives, so she was unfamiliar with the process in general as well as the extreme quirkiness of the software at this particular store--I never seem to get through even a ten item purchase without the recorded voice informing me of a goof-up I've usually not actually made. Half the time, the voice (a lady's voice that sounds a lot like my GPS) is incorrectly informing me that the item is an incorrect weight for what it's supposed to be or instructing me to put the item in the bag even though I've already done so.
The software apparently has a recorded word, often generic because they have so much specialty stuff, for every item, and that word is spoken extra loud with pauses on either side--it's probably a fill-in-the-blank kind of thing so room is allotted for some longer grocery words. So in the latter case above, say it's milk you've just scanned but not yet (supposedly) put on the carousel, the voice will say, "Put your MILK in the bag!"
So there are Annabelle and I, going kind of slow because Annabelle's having fun with it and we're sorting according to whether the stuff is going to go into the garage fridge or the house fridge, and Annabelle scans some cream, say, and it says "Put your CREAM in the bag!" And then there were some cherries and it said, "Put your CHERRIES in the bag!" And next came some English Muffins made by a local bakery, and delivered into one of those gloriously coincidental moments of simultaneous silence all around so that everyone within 20 feet heard it was delivered this instruction, "Put your BUNS in the bag!"
It's now a running gag at that market. The cashiers had never heard that one before and they now see me and think "BUNS!"
That self-check out has not gone over here at all. At least where II shop. Safeway was trying it but the last time I was in the store, I did not see it there. In fact, they used to have a grocery clerk trying to lure people to try it. LOL, no one was biting.
