I visited home a few days ago. While I was there, I decided to be a good daughter and pick up a few groceries for Mom at a large, commercial supermarket, a.k.a. The Man. While there, I obviously browsed the shampoo aisle for personal enjoyment. I decided I needed a bottle that was green with a pointy top and an oblique angular body, not unlike some sort of boomerang. It looked like modern art. Because of this, it was clearly superior to all the other bottles of shampoo on the shelf in both aesthetic and chemical quality.
When I arrived at the checkout, I saw that there was only one real lane open and about 20 (read: five or six) people with full carts lined up to use it. Then there were about 100 (read: exactly eight) check-out-yourself-because-we-don’t-care-about-your-shopping-experience-bitch lanes available. I only had a small basketful of items so I made my way to one of the do-it-yourself lanes.
The last thing I scanned was the angular shampoo – and it didn’t work. I made sure I had the bar code in the right place and scanned again. Again, it didn’t work! I tried a third time. And it worked ... just kidding! It didn’t.
So I lifted it.
No employees were around, and you know what I felt about this situation after leaving the store? Nothing. I didn’t feel the satisfaction of saying goodbye to a nice salesperson, nor the rush of knowing that I cheated someone and am therefore superior to them in both agility and wit. There was absolutely no one around who had any idea that I shoplifted or any concern whatsoever about my shopping experience. It was, in a word, whatever. It was so incredibly whatever.
The interesting thing is, that big old store lost a $4 bottle of shampoo because they didn’t want to hire an extra cashier for $6 an hour. It’s lame. I’m not saying I need someone to pump my gas for me or analyze every pair of jeans I try on, but there should at least be someone there to ring me up and make sure I don’t steal, or have an experience resulting in me having no qualms about stealing. Those do-it-yourself lanes are a good idea for the following: men buying their girlfriends tampons, race fans buying themselves health food and fraternity brothers buying something other than alcohol – obviously they wouldn’t want anyone to see them with such embarrassing merchandise. But me with my shampoo? I’d have been fine with a real person.
That said, I know this is the state of customer service in America. It isn’t all that big of a deal. But, if this is how it’s going to be I’d rather have cashiers at the supermarket than at clothing and appliance stores. As, well as the energy company. And the IRS.
