Day Sixty-Nine:: Recovery/Humans are Better than Machines

Sitting on a bus for five days is exhausting.  How that is I am not sure, but I honestly think that I could sleep for then next week and still not be caught up on sleep.  However, I was also hungry and the cupboard I have claimed as my pantry was dismally low on supplies, so I had to wake up, shower, get in real clothes, and walk to Tesco to restock.

Here's the story: They love self checkouts at grocery stores here.  I will be standing in line for the normal, human operated checkout, but there will be an attendant who will urge me to go to self checkout in a forceful tone with urgent hand actions to accompany.  They don't understand that I have too many groceries for the self checkout experience to be one that lacks pain and embarrassment as the little table thing that they have for you to put your groceries on after you scan them is too small for my week's supply and it just is not good.  

But today I was not up to deal with people passionately urging me away from the normal checkout and went straight to the self checkout.  I strategically loaded by backpack with the food that I had scanned in a manner that left the heaviest things at the bottom of the bag and pressed the "Pay Now" button before inserting my coins into the coin slot.  Twenty-six pence into the payment some mechanism jammed and the machine was flashing the red light begging for the attendant to come help us out.  

The attendant has not helpful though past scanning her attendant barcode and repeatedly pushing a button that said that she had cleared the jam, when she had not.  She was confused as to why it was not working, despite her not actually fixing the problem.  In the end I had to start over again on a different machine and I had to redo the meticulous packing of my backpack, which part angered me the most of all the aspects of the prolonged exchange.

Additionally, grocery schooling sicks when you are poor and there is a plethora of Cadbury around you.

Peace out,

Kelsie