So as much as I promote technology and all that jazz, I’m really starting to think that people should have to get a license to use a lot of it. Comptuers are a given, and today at Wal-Mart I found two more.
Self-checkout lanes are such a bad idea it’s not even funny. You can steal from them. You can trick them. They don’t work the way humans work. They don’t really even work well at all. I was standing behind this ten year old kid (parents, don’t let toddlers try to use the self-checkout thing…) and the kid didn’t get it. He kept scanning the stuff over and over, even though the screen had some error on it and the machine kept beeping at him. His mother was just standing there looking at him, almost proud that he was being completely inept. The Wal-Checker had to come fix the thing twice, and neither she nor the mother lifted a finger to keep the little punk from messing up the machine.
I switched lanes to a real, old fashioned, honest-to-god human being. The line moved quickly. There I encountered the second piece of technology that people ought to have to have a license to operate: the credit card thing. The three men in front of me couldn’t seem to figure out the thing to save their lives. It took them two minutes to get to the part where you sign, and then they had to do it over again. They’re grown men. The buttons are simple — ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ present just about the toughest decision you have to make when using the thing. Say it with me now… swipe, poke, poke, sign. Not that hard.
Anyway … after that fun trip, Mike and I walked around Horton Plaza… the shopping mall designed by a madman. Or a behavioral psychologist. It’s a freaking mind-trap. You can’t get anywhere you need to be, you can’t get out, and the walls are all crazy-colored.
Hmm, I’m getting hungry. What to eat?
