Welcome back to the final installment of my autism-aware shopping trip through the grocery store. Week by week, I've shown you what the store sells, pruned down the selection to what's safe for me (because autistic people can have very sensitive systems) and point out various gotchas the store tries to make you buy stuff you didn't come for.
This is a bonus post, which is just for the checkout lanes. There are actually three kinds of checkout options, including the traditional setup that was the standard for decades: a clerk, at a register, with a lane.
An overview shot. You can see the sheer amount of snacks and junk food artfully arranged to tempt you at every possible opportunity. You can also see the entrances to all three checkout options, if you know where to look.
We'll start with the traditional option.
Two versions of the same thing. You have your impulse purchases on either side, followed by the conveyer you unload your bags/cart onto for the cashier, followed by the cashier's station, the register, and the bagging area. The cashier (a real person) scans your items one at a time, bags them for you, gives you the total cost of your purchases, takes your payment in cash, check, or card, and returns you any change and your receipt.
I chose closed lanes because I didn't want to worry the cashiers, so you can also see the adorable plastic chain that wouldn't stop an excited toddler from passing.
Right side of one of the traditional checkout lanes. Magazines, which run the gamut from "might be useful" to "what monster was okay with wasting paper on this garbage?" And after that, an array of candy. Remember how there was a candy aisle? Yeah, so this is in addition to that whole aisle.
This is all designed to make you do what's called impulse buying, which is just buying stuff because the urge grabs you to, perhaps before you can think about it very hard. Now, a single candy bar might not be that much money on a single shopping trip, but over the course of a year, it adds up, and the toll is taken both on your bank account and on your body.
The other side of a typical checkout lane. I was actually surprised at how standardized the lanes are now. In other stores I remember, the contents of the lanes would vary, sometimes rather widely. Perhaps because of less available space? But these seemed pretty cookie cutter. Magazines across from chilled drinks. Candy across from salty snacks, gift cards, and some small convenient items, like lighters, lip balm, flash lights, bleach pens, and travel sized hand sanitizer.
That's option 1, the traditional checkout lane. I typically avoid this because dealing with a live human involves making conversation, or at least interacting to some small extent, and that costs effort and comes with tons of social pitfalls. And I just want to avoid those as much as possible.
Let's look at the other two options, shall we?
There seems to finally be an employee monitoring the area, but in times past, the whole place was deserted. Even by the customers. Seriously, nobody uses this despite the corporation really, really wanting people to.
In my case, it's that I really don't want my grocery store having access to my phone, apps, and identity any more than it already does. Can't speak for everyone else though.
In one store I visited, I saw these converted to "5 items or less, and also our system we're begging you to use PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE." It's maybe telling that even in a pandemic, people would rather use option 1 or option 3 over this one...
And that brings us to option 3: the self-checkout.
Once upon a time, these used to come in the single lane variety of the first option. Unfortunately, some manipulative troglodyte in marketing realized that you could make people walk past a ton more impulse purchases if you just rearrange the checkout setup... and so we have this instead:
This is one long aisle that feeds into 10 mini-checkout stations. It has everything a traditional lane has, and more. There are candy bars. There are packs of jerky. There are pastries and sweetbreads. It's a smorgasbord of everything you shouldn't put in your body.
If you're wondering why I sound so resentful of this development, it's because resisting the urge to buy impulse purchases costs mental effort, and I am painfully short on energy at most times, but especially now.
These stations used to be "express." The definition of "express" varied, but it was typically 15-20 items or less. Now, I guess the idea was successful enough that they've pulled the numerical requirement off and opened it to any shopper that cares to traverse the gauntlet.
Let's have a closer look.
So, from top to bottom, you have your screen, your scanner and credit card reader, your scanning surface that includes a scale, a surface to put your stuff on before you scan it, and a surface to put stuff on after you scan it. The latter comes with a plastic bag dispenser, for all your incredibly unfriendly-to-the-environment bagging needs. Below all of that is the cash and change dispensers, the receipt printout, and the coupon receptacle.
In this version, you scan everything at the checkout, using the interface here. There's a way to look up fresh produce using the PLU (or Price Look Up) code, like 4162. That's large Pippin variety apples, for anyone who was suddenly curious. Normally in option 1, the cashier would do this for you.
You are also responsible for bagging all your own things, which at least lets me use my cloth bags without awkwardness.
This is the option I almost invariably take when I buy things at this store, because although it makes me an unpaid cashier, it does let me circumvent most social contact, which... I really appreciate most of the time.
And that's that! Let me know what you thought of this series, and if you're interested in similar walkthroughs of other stores, such as Target, Trader Joe's, or Aldi.
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