I remember sophomore year when Ms. Armstrong introduced me to the strike situation going on with the grocery store clerks. I was very sympathetic. Yet, during one trip to a grocery store (after this was over, I think), I thought, “Wait a second, all of these people aren’t going to have jobs in 5-10 years anyway.” The grocery store clerk was going to disappear. I thought they would perhaps be replaced by RFID.

Well, it didn’t happen quite the way I thought it would. Self-checking is so prevalent these days. Half of the counters were self-checking at a grocery store I went to today.

It’s taking less time than I thought it would.

Isn’t it odd? Does anyone notice these things? Does anyone notice how in the span of a few years we went from practically no self-checking to so many self-checking stations? Does anyone not take these things for granted?

It looked so odd, so foreign to me. I felt like a time traveller in a futuristic world. I saw a young infant watching his parent use the self-checking thing. Beep. It recited the price in a robotic voice. I thought about how this child will take this kind of thing for granted. Since he’s been alive, the internet has always existed. He’ll grow up in a world where grocery store clerks will not exist.

I, for one, still refuse to use self-checking. I want someone to wait on me.