Purgatory on the shop floor

For a moment you can't work out what is different. Your head spins and you think you're having a funny turn.

My head was spinning when I recently went to our usual supermarket in the nearest town. What was different? Everything, by the look of it, but I was horrified to see they were installing a self-service checkout area. For a long time now I'd liked the fact that this particular Continente Modelo only had checkouts with real live people.

There are a number of things I've liked about going to this shop in preference to any of the others within a similar distance from home, not least because the very affable store manager is often on the shop floor helping staff to stack shelves or arrange displays and not stuck haughtily in his office somewhere out of sight. Another reason is the friendliness of the staff, one of whom always makes a beeline for me if he can so he can practice his two dozen words of English. A very important reason, though, was the lack of self-service tills. Now all this is changing.

Attitude defining

I stood there looking at this defiled space. My mind cast back to one of my earliest experiences with these devilish devices, an experience that probably defined my attitude. I had popped into a large supermarket in Porto. All I wanted was a tiny tub of mosquito lavae for the goldfish we had at the time but, as usually happens, I ended up with a small basket of things that I suddenly realised my life would not be complete without, including a rather nice bottle of Alentejo red. The queues at the tills were long but there weren't many at the self-service area.

The on-screen instructions were clear enough and the voice that accompanied them was obviously trained to talk to idiots. That was just as well and I nodded through the routines requested and even answered the softly spoken voice at one point. I am, above all, polite. All was going well – I made the machine go beep when I passed an item in front of the scanner, the price popped up on the screen, the soothing voice told the numbskull in front of it to drop the item in the bag and, hey presto, we were ready for the next purchase. Finally, I scanned the mosquito lavae, the price popped up and I dropped it in the open bag containing the rest of the shopping. The machine froze. Seek assistance, the machine said. Yes, my family keeps telling me that.

The hawk-eyed keeper of the self-service machines sprinted over. Well, ambled, perhaps, and cast an expert gaze over proceedings and came to the conclusion that the packet of mosquito lavae had been so light that it hadn't registered in the bag. Instead of calmly asking me to try again or something, the machine had sulked and frozen. She picked up the offending item and checked the screen to see that I hadn't been trying to snaffle through unpaid for lavae and dropped it back into the bag from a great height. Nothing happened. I realised what was needed and as she tried again I put some extra weight onto the bag with my hand. This did the trick and the machine sprang back into life and, for a split second, all seemed well. However, the sudden movement had caused the bag to tilt from its centre of gravity. With the slowness of an all-action-hero film scene, it started to topple sideways, bottle and all. With dream-like arm movements and a long drawn-out howl, I moved to catch the falling bag. Meanwhile, the shop assistant, having seen the same kind of film, reacted in the same way. As a result, we collided and the bag plummeted to the floor, with the bottle doing what bottles usually do when they meet stone flags. It's rarely a happy ending.

I was expecting an altercation about who had responsibility for the senseless slaughter of fine grapes but there was no argument at all and I was quickly handed a replacement bottle by a sleepy-looking lad. He had to step around the cleaner who was cleaning up the tragic mess. She was fussing about my shoes, which had been spattered with fine ruby red wine, while the assistant with whom I had collided was completing my transaction on my behalf, obviously having made a wise assessment about the capabilities of the client. I was clearly dimmer than the talking machine was programmed to deal with. As a result of me trying to use a personnel-free piece of technology, I was now receiving the assistance of three people instead of the usual one at the normal checkout.

All this went through my head as I stared at the space being desecrated in our local supermarket. One of the checkout assistants, who is always friendly to me, must have seen the look on my face. “Don't you like it?” she asked and I shook my head. We exchanged a few words and it was clear that she was less than thrilled at this threat to her job.

“Progress,” we both said, making it sound very much like a swear word.

Fitch is a retired teacher trainer and academic writer who has lived in northern Portugal for over 30 years. Author of 'Rice & Chips', irreverent glimpses into Portugal, and other books.

Fitch O'Connell