Dean Minnich: Finding a Zen moment at checkout

The best parking spots in shopping store lots are now reserved for customer pickup of call-in orders. Inside the stores, former cashiers fill carts for the call-ins. Rows of full-service checkout stations requiring cashiers stand abandoned; the apps people wait for a turn at a self-check.

This all comes after a short chat with one of my favorite cashiers. I waited a short time in line while she ran the only cash register in a line of silent machines. It was a big order for an older couple. She took time to sort crushables from the cans and bottles, bagging the items with an eye to limiting weight. She checked for discounts and made sure the cash or card transaction was correct and did it all with a smile. She sees the value in personal contact for her customers.

The apps people are rolling their eyes now. Old geezer wants the kind of folksy service at the counters of the 1950s, when most grocery stores were about the size of today’s average deli department.

I wait for cashiers because it’s my way of making a statement about the value of human-to-human service. I mentioned that to the lady who was putting my order away faster than I would wrestling with the insistent robotic voice at the self-check telling me to, “Scan the item and place it in the bagging area … Scan item and place in bagging area. Remove the item from the bag.”

And the inevitable, “Please wait for assistance.”

I have been known to show a darker side at the self-check, throwing things, telling the robot, “All right, already!” I have been known to tell the robot to shut up, which is the only time I get eye contact from supervising humans, who seem likey they are selected for their ability to make you feel like a candidate for some kind of rehab.

Stressful.

My friendly live check-out clerk agreed that some of the older people who come through her line might not get too many chances to talk to a live person during the week. Even inconsequential observations about the heat and the need for rain are a welcome connection with another person, a small change from the routine.

None of this is new, it’s just more slippage down a slope we’ve been on for years. My theory is that we have so many choices, so many things we could do, demands from marketers to buy, buy, and so we join mindless masses on treadmills of commerce.

After graduating high school, I worked in my dad’s general store in Manchester. One night, we drove to Westminster to look at a new “supermarket” that had moved from a Main Street storefront to a sprawling location with a large area for parking on the edge of town.

We stopped just inside the front door and could not see the back of the place. Rows of checkouts, all clacking away. Five or six times the size of our grocery store with its two checkout counters..

“People won’t shop here,” Dad said. “Too many choices, too big.”

Maybe he believed it. But I knew at that moment that I would not be joining the family business. I got a job with an airline. Six years later, dad sold his interest in the store and went to work for the post office.

That big market was eventually turned into a car dealership. All the other grocery stores on Westminster’s Main Street moved out along the bypass, and all have been replaced by bigger stores farther out.

Changes like these to small towns inspired my first novel, Angel Summer, now out of print. It sold well locally in small bookstores that are also gone.

Dean Minnich writes from Westminster.