Self-checkout machines are impersonal — and scary as hell

r.j. kushner
2 min readAug 16, 2024

It’s no great secret that our country has an isolation problem. People feel lonely and are finding it hard to connect with each other. It’s also no secret that our country has a monster problem — more and more horrifying monsters are popping up, flashing their lights and making loud noises that cause me to scream and scream and smash things with my fists.

Enter the self-checkout machine, which manages to combine both of these problems together — and the outcome is terrible. It is long past time to get rid of these terrifying monsters and bring back personal interaction.

When I was growing up, if I wanted a banana, I would first have to eat all of the bugs off of my aunts and uncles. It took a lot of time, and usually they didn’t even have the good bugs (the red ones). Nowadays, kids are spoiled. Everyone wants “instant gratification.” But they’re also missing something important: one-on-one interaction. I learned much from the interaction with my aunts and uncles, like, for instance, to stay away from the hot yellow. Welcoming back cashiers to our stores will not only bring back jobs, it will bring back social skills and, potentially, generational learning.

The first time my scientist brought me to a grocery store, I was thrilled. There was much fruit and I didn’t even have to fight off any…

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r.j. kushner

Dubbed by the New York Times as “all out of free articles this month.”