I was initially resistant to the self-checkout kiosks at my local grocery store when they were introduced a few years ago.
It didn’t take long, however, for me to start choosing those kiosks when the regular check-out lines were long. By that time, New Jersey had banned plastic bags, so I reverted to the “I can do it faster myself” way of thinking, armed with cute bags made from recycled materials.
The way it had become so easy to breeze past the friendly faces of cashiers standing at the end caps of their respective, often empty, check-out lanes waiting to welcome customers might not seem unusual. For me, though, it’s started to feel like a sign of something bigger.
There’s a loneliness epidemic
Not only did I not have to interact with anyone in the case I’d rolled out to the store looking less than my best, but I was also saving time, I reasoned. A recovering dishwasher loading control freak, I’m also pretty specific about the way I think groceries should be bagged — heaviest to lightest, eggs, bread, and chips on top.
Meanwhile, the US is facing a loneliness epidemic, and our culture, especially post-pandemic, is to blame. I’m guilty of leaning into leaving my house and socializing less over the past several years, despite considering myself a social person.
According to a recent report from the American Psychological Association, many teens are turning to AI chatbots for friendship and emotional support. My college-age daughters confirmed this to be true, which should be concerning to everyone. As someone with a lifelong obsession with human behaviors, I also find it thought-provoking. It raises the question, what can we as a society do about it?
I went back to regular cashiers
I decided that the first step for me personally was to prioritize more human interaction at the grocery store. There was a part of me that missed simply saying “Hello” and asking how the person, who was specifically there to help fellow humans, was doing. If my daughters are with me, they often find something to compliment, “I like your nails,” or “Your tattoo is so cool, what does it mean?”
These days, it seems to catch some by surprise, and then to see smiles or share an unexpected laugh with a stranger — there’s something mutually fulfilling in that. In the smallest moments, we remember how others make us feel. That’s humanity, and community.
When we first moved to our little town in South Jersey, just outside Philadelphia, I knew the produce guy by name. Al had also worked on our house, and his granddaughter and our daughters went to the same elementary school. For many years, I looked forward to exchanging a few pleasantries with him and didn’t care, or correct him, when he called me Stephanie instead of Jennifer.
It’s been so nice to interact with other people
We’re officially at a point where too many people are longing for connection and to be seen, to have someone be interested in even the smallest thing about them. I make at least a couple of trips to the grocery store each week (because I’m too indecisive to plan meals in advance) and have been choosing to go to the human cashier over self-checkout whenever possible.
It’s been a breath of fresh air to overhear the chatter between cashiers and customers. I stopped in for a few things recently in anticipation of some bad weather, which people from the northeast will tell you means “milk, bread, and eggs.” The cashier, an older woman, called me “honey” but not in the passive-aggressive way Taylor Swift sings about on her latest “The Life of a Showgirl” album. She told me to be careful driving home as a coworker walked by and handed her a bag of homemade ginger snap cookies. Her face lit up.
In conversation with another cashier, a young woman, I learned she hates the cold. The high temperature that day was 25 degrees. We chatted about how she could move south, but then she’d fear tornadoes, and Florida was out of the question because of snakes. We laughed.
Walking away, I thought about how I’ve been missing the minutiae that are only present when we choose to see and acknowledge each other in person.
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