Unpopular Opinion: Self-Checkouts Should Be Banned From Saying Hello
Gary Opinions argues that automated greetings are the first step toward a society where machines expect emotional availability before accepting a cucumber.
I have had enough of self-checkouts saying hello to me. This is precise. The machine has no mouth, no childhood and no reason to address me according to the electrical weather of my presence. Still, it chirps a greeting while I try to buy one biscuit and leave Lower Wombley with my dignity intact.
Its timing is appalling. It says hello when I arrive, goodbye while I am still there, then thanks me after I have done every part of the job. I scan the items, bag them, settle the machine’s private dispute with the weight of a pear, and the kiosk behaves as though it hosted the transaction from a chaise longue. Small plastic monarchy.
I settled on this view during a rainstorm. The self-checkout welcomed me with the confidence of a cruise director. I had crossed three puddles, put a receipt into my own sleeve and forgotten why I needed the biscuit in the first place. It did not ask whether I was ready. It greeted me as if we had spent a summer abroad.
“A silent checkout is still a checkout, but it has stopped pretending to be your cousin.”
That was enough for Lower Wombley. The authorities have formed a committee. Myrtle Quince, Keeper of the Official Queue Bell and its chair, told me that greetings create “a positive shopping atmosphere”. This is the sort of thing said by a person who has never stood beside a machine calling a loaf of bread an unexpected item. I do not require atmosphere. I require the machine to understand that the transaction concerns me and the receipt.
The case for friendliness gets weaker from there. A toaster can be warm. A scarf can offer comfort. A self-checkout is a metal kiosk with a lit square that sometimes demands assistance, usually after you have already provided it. Treating this as companionship is how people began thanking lifts for arriving on time.
So the reform is straightforward. Every self-checkout stays silent until you have finished the purchase, found the receipt and moved seven paces away. Then it may whisper one neutral syllable into a locked drawer. Should it say hello any earlier, the kiosk must stare at the floor and consider its conduct.
I know this will be unpopular. I wrote it in a newspaper and underlined it twice in my kitchen. But history will settle the matter. Shoppers will enter Lower Wombley, scan groceries in silence and leave without a greeting from an appliance whose only contribution was an allegation involving a pear. On that day, I will say hello to nobody. I will mean it.
As Myrtle Quince, Keeper of the Official Queue Bell, explained from behind a basket of onions, “A silent checkout is still a checkout, but it has stopped pretending to be your cousin.”