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Copyrights reserved by the author. If you are in doubt, please click on 'Copyrights' and read the details. Losing the race to keep up with technology by J. G. Fabiano I consider myself technologically competent, or at least I used to! I am comfortable with a computer and I am able to use many of the new programs that have been developed at my home and at school. However, shopping with my wife the other day clearly demonstrated that I am being left behind by many of the newest technological marvels. My wife and I had to stop at BJ's Wholesale Club in Portsmouth, New Hampshire - actually, my wife had to stop so there was no choice in the matter. We wandered through a labyrinth of lanes between mountains of merchandise stacked to the rafters so the consumer can pluck out a case of this, a box of that, so I picked out a case of beer. I figured it was the least I could do for myself after an evening of shopping. As we walked toward the checkout counters I noticed there were few people standing at the registers. In fact, even though all the lights above the registers were on, showing they were open, there was not a cashier near any of them. I looked at my wife and asked if this meant that everything in the store was free? She gave me a look that works better than a Botox treatment and my face instantly felt numb. As we walked up to the deserted check-out counter I saw that it was brand new, made of shiny stainless steel and there was a keyboard in the front that looked like an ATM machine. On the other side of the machine was a long conveyer belt that led down to a kind of island. When I place my shopping cart near the machine it detected my presence and spoke to me in the soothing voice of a very nice woman. "Please slide your card on the front glass, "it said. OK, I thought, I can do this. Hey, over the past few years I have sequenced DNA so I am sure I can figure out an automatic cashier machine. My wife thought we should find somebody to walk us through this new process. "Are you kidding?" I said. "Relax, I'll have us out of here in a couple of seconds." Then I tried to remember what it was the nice computer machine woman had asked me. "Please slide your card on the front glass," she asked again, except this time she sounded a little impatient. Were they programming these things now to cop an attitude, I wondered? I took out my card and swiped it down the cardslider on the side of the machine. A couple of seconds later the machine asked me again to please slide my card on the front glass. I thought I must have had swiped my card upside down so I flipped it over and swiped it again down that little slide that most grocery stores have now when you want to use a debit or charge card. After a couple of seconds wait the not-so-nice-anymore-computer-machine-lady told me I needed help. Honest to God, that's what she said, she told me I had to find somebody to help me through the process of checking out. Now it was my turn to be annoyed. By this time a store assistant had noticed I was having trouble and came over to help. I told her there was something wrong with the machine because it would not take my card. She then took the card from my hand and placed it on the glass besides the slide that I had been using. The machine then thanked me even though it knew it was not me who had slid the card over the glass. The computer machine woman then asked me to scan my merchandize. The assistant, who was younger than any of my students, asked if I needed any more help. I told her 'no' but I thought they should program the machine so that it would be more precise as to where I should put my card. She smiled nicely and walked away. My wife then asked me what part about sliding my card on the front glass I did not understand? I then started to scan my merchandize. The first thing I scanned was my beer. It worked well in that it showed me what I owed and then moved it down the belt. I then scanned some of the stuff my wife had bought and watched it slide down the belt. All this time the young assistant watched from a distance. I did notice that she had been joined by a group of her fellow workers. Since they were all staring at me I assumed they must be on break. I then decided I would show up these young whippersnappers and scan the rest of my stuff in a faster fashion. I found the bar codes quickly and ran them over the glass and threw them on the belt. I was well on my way to pro status when the belt abruptly stopped and proceeded to move backwards. The mellow female voice of the machine told me everything I had just scanned had been credited because of an overload on the belt. I noticed my wife had that familiar "I told you so" look on her face and then she walked over to the group of store assistants who had now all turned away from me and must have been fighting a group sneeze because they all had their hands over their mouths and their shoulders were shaking. As I stood there, open mouthed, watching the machine reject everything I had processed over the past few minutes. Then one of my wife's bottles of wine made a break for it, leaped from the conveyor belt and smashed onto the floor, splattering broken glass and blood red wine all over the place. At that moment everything stopped. I am not just talking about the machine I was working with. I am talking about everything and everybody in the store. For a moment everybody stopped what he or she was doing and looked my way. I did what I always do in these situations: I shrugged, folded my hands and looked pathetic. My wife tells me I do this very well. After what seemed like an eternity the machine broke the awful silence by telling me: "Please slide your card on the front glass." I knew then that I was beaten. My wife came over, took the card from me and told me to go and wait with the cart. And she still hasn't given me my card back! The End
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