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one item preferred to wait behind other customers in the queue doing their weekly shop.
Assistants were sent to speak to these people, to invite them to try out the new system and
cajole them into breaking rank.
One old man reacted angrily by pointing out that he wasn't being paid to work on the till so
why should he do all the work. The lady on the till was being paid, he said, gathering support
for his cause, and he would not sentence her to unemployment by using 'your robots'. Other
customers around him angrily voiced their support and clapped him on the shoulder, 'Bravo!'
said one getting over-excited by the prospect of a bit of civil unrest.
In the first few days of their existence I didn't see anyone use them. Their shininess went
unsullied and bagging areas were left without unidentified items as a war of attrition began
to break out between old values and new ways. Slowly, though, as the supermarket realised
that providing only one manned till at peak shopping times would do the trick, people began
reluctantly to try the alternative. It was painful to watch. Previously proud and determin-
ed people started using the things sheepishly, avoiding eye contact with their comrades still
queuing on the manned tills. The queues began to build on the new tills as friendships be-
came strained in the community; one Parisian started berating the locals for taking too long
on the self-service tills. 'This would never happen in Paris!' she said huffily, endearing herself
to no-one. 'Go and do your shopping there then!' was the riposte.
In their first few weeks I saw one farmer punch a machine, people swear at the till's inability
to realise that not everyone wants to put something in the bagging area and others just walk
through without bothering to scan anything at all. They had to employ a security guard to
stand with an assistant and install electronic gates that another assistant would release assum-
ing the till had finished bullying you.
My guess is that these machines will go the same way as the local speed traps; some latter
day Luddite will sneak up on one from behind, throw a bag over its head and beat it brutally
with a big stick. The machine will fall, like a soured symbol of modernity and whine dole-
fully, 'Did you use your own bag?'
Anyway, it hasn't put me off. I am still in the supermarket a lot, partly because I like it and
partly because having three growing boys at home is like catering for a plague of locusts, not
to mention the dog food, cat food, horse food and wine stocks. As a result I'm there pretty
much all the time and clearly therefore, not to be trusted. The fact that I'm there nearly every
day and that I'm a man has apparently set some alarm bells ringing. Quite a lot of men ac-
tually stay in their cars and let their wives do the shopping, only emerging from the car in a
cloud of Gauloises smoke to pack the boot and get their trolley euro back, they certainly don't
do all the shopping themselves and dress as a 1960s English dandy. As a result, everybody
who works in the supermarket thinks I'm up to no good.
It all stemmed from an incident a couple of years ago. I had picked up a television guide,
moved on to the beer section and then placed a crate of beer on top of the magazine. At the
