by Barry Parham

Created on: April 13, 2010

Bar(code) Hopping

(Odysseus and Einstein meet Enya and expired coupons)

Despite what you might think, the most brutal social equalizer in America is the not the Department of Motor Vehicles. It's the neighborhood grocery.

Sure, you might argue that the more likely candidate is the DMV. That's a fair call, but there are three problems with that analysis:

1)    Not everybody drives, so not everybody has to visit the DMV.

2)    We all have to buy milk. I think there's a law.

3)    The DMV is not, technically, staffed with earthlings.

Yes, the grocery. And I'm not talking about those clever, trendy Mom 'n' Pop boutiques that sell eleven things (three are actually in stock), at prices that require a co-signer, and that employ piped-in Enya albums to discourage browsers. Granted, these boutiques are the be-and-end-all when your sadistic recipe calls for a half-bottle's spritz of non-necrotic, fully-fleece-friendly, free-range Azerbaijanian goat appendix. But we're not likely to long for such culinary treats here in America, where the average grocery list revolves around various types of cheese spelled with a "Z."

No, I'm talking about those cavernous shopping-center anchor stores with consistently misspelled names, like Bi-Now and Banana Republix and Kroakers and Great Big Honkin' Food Planet.

Admittedly, we could chat and dicker for days about the various irritations that define the grocery shopping experience. There are no clocks. There are no windows. There are 38 dozen check-out lanes (three are actually open). There are more "breakfast power bar" options than there are humans who can actually afford to eat breakfast. They have a bizarre fascination for magazines about miracle diets, Oprah, alien babies and Brad Pitt. To get from hamburger meat to hamburger buns requires 3 bus transfers and an estimated 2 hours (estimated, for there are no clocks).

Not to mention the subway ride back over to the grocery's Cheez Aisle.

But today, I want to draw your attention to the "check your own self out" lanes:  those 4-6 little automated kiosks, off to the side, that theoretically let you warp-speed your way through the check-out process by theoretically scanning your own grocery items, with absolutely no human intervention whatsoever. It was, as polite people might put it, a "nice idea."

You know 'em. You wanna like 'em. You wanna use 'em.

You can't.

First, your ears are sand-blasted by some quasi-robotic female voice, welcoming

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