I think I’m one of the few people who actually experiences heightened anxiety when going through the self-serve checkouts as opposed to the people-operated ones.

Like being able to Snapchat someone your poo, the self-serve checkout was a novelty at first but has now evolved to become a regular fixture in our everyday lives. And it seems to make sense. Scanning your items yourself cuts out time spent lining up and the machines are cheaper for supermarkets to run than living, breathing, profit-sucking employees. It sounds like a win-win.

In a world where it’s trendy to hate people as a collective (not enough to spark a mass genocide, but enough to make people justify their hermit-like behaviour, distain for human interaction and general self-loathing as an edgy honesty about people being insufferable instead of admitting that they might just be a bit of a jerk) the self-serve checkout is a glistening beacon of hope in the bleak and misty wasteland that is our cultural landscape. Don’t get me wrong, it would absolutely be a godsend for people struggling with social anxiety, those with communication impediments and a host of other people for whom going through a manned checkout would be daunting, if not impossible. It’s also really useful for someone wanting to buy something quite embarrassing like a candle that has absolutely no scent and is set in a ceramic bowl with words like “tranquil”, “love”, and “enlightenment” written around it in a curly script. But for me, the self-service checkout it a thing to be feared.

First of all we need to address the overwhelming guilt I feel when approaching the row of automated cashiers that I’ve put an actual cashier out of a job. I don’t want to know that I’ve forced some long-fingernailed teenager with baldy-drawn eyebrows and an inappropriately-buttoned work shirt out of a job. I don’t want to come in the way of her phone bills, her obscenely overpriced Schoolies accommodation or her ability to bribe an older relative to buy her Cruiser Double Blacks to get her smashed at the weekend’s house party. I don’t want her to have to settle for regular guava Cruisers. She’ll need twice as many to get her drunk enough to interpretive dance to a Flume song and all that extra sugar will go straight to her hips. She can’t have that extra weight with the formz coming up, and I won’t have that extra weight on my conscience.

But sometimes I am in a hurry, and have to get my one kilo bucket of hummus back to the office for a makeshift lunch when I work through my break. Usually, these are the times when every man and his dog are clogging the lines. Even the 12 items or less aisle is jammed with arrogant arseholes who can’t count to 12. So I scoot through the self-service section and hang my head in shame.

I tell myself that it’s a hummus emergency and the self-service lane is really like a 12 items or less aisle without the requirement for the scanner to drop everything and serve the people buying cigarettes at the adjoining counter. Because everyone knows some wanker wanting to poison their body with smoking while slowly crippling our public health system deserves priority over a patiently-waiting shopper so their can get their death sticks faster.

So the prospect of taking more than five items through the self-service lane feels like I’m being a giant hassle to all the other people out there just trying to get their lunch-replacement hummus before deadline. The idea of taking an actual trolley full of items through the lane is like a huge rude finger to all other shoppers. There is no way that you can fumble around with scanning, bagging and loading your items into the trolley with the same speed as a trained checkout assistant. No way.

Because they were built for speed, there’s this unspoken vibe of “hurry the fuck up” in the self-service aisle that doesn’t exist elsewhere. This sense of urgency heightens to a panic in the busier periods. You nearly crack under the pressure to get out of there as fast as humanly possible. It’s like the shop is the sinking fucking Titanic and the self-service lane is the line for lifeboats after most of the women and children are gone; every bastard is scrambling to get through as fast as they can at any cost. You half expect someone to shoot into the air or shout “your money can’t save you anymore than it can save me”. You don’t have time to muck around; there’s too much at stake.

Then of course comes the fear that you’ve stolen something. Now, I’m not one who can usually cope with guilt, cheating or deceit of any kind. Maybe that has something to do with the poem we were forced to perform in primary school about Ned Kelly, his hanging death and the chilling climax of a room full of children shouting, “crime doesn’t pay”. Whatever the reason, I can’t handle dishonesty on my part of any kind except if I deem it to be for the greater good (i.e. that lie the nun told on Paradise Road which ultimately saved Glen Close’s life or pretending to get a text just as a Foxtel telemarketer makes eye contact with you in a shopping centre). I have a few mantras I like to live by. “You don’t wanna root some grot” is one of them. But the old chestnut “honesty is the best policy” is probably equally as important. Unfortunately, the second one is harder to follow when you find someone has accidentally left a container of salt they purchased in a plastic bag and you’ve unknowingly loaded that bag with your items and wonder if you have to flee the country. Imagine the surprise and shame you feel when you unload your groceries and pull out an unpaid for item and discover that you’re a criminal. It’s unpleasant and, quite frankly, not worth the risk.

Grocery shopping is supposed to be a simple, mindless errand and the kind of technology our grand species keeps devoting energy to is supposed to make it even easier. But let’s not pretend this particular development is the holy grail of purchasing moderately-priced goods. Just like being able to send a picture that last for 10 seconds of your leavings to a friend, just because we can do it doesn’t mean we should. Or at the very least, we shouldn’t do it every time.

You know you’ve got some problems when you stop and question whether an 18 cent purchase is too decadent.

I’m not kidding.

Today I stood in the supermarket debating whether it was a wise financial choice to buy marked down flowers. Severely marked down. I’m talking EIGHTEEN BLOODY CENTS. At this point the supermarket surely can’t be any profit from that bunch of vegetation. It’s probably actually costing the store more in terms of employee effort at that price – there’s sticking on the discount sticker, scanning the item and then putting them in a bloody bag. That’s the 18 cents right there.

Sure, they were a bit on the wilty side, and some of them looked like the plant equivalent of Ezma from The Emperor’s New Groove, but surely they were worth at least the full 20 cent coin. They were still doing their job, which is to sit quietly and distract us from the blisteringly depressing realties of life with their presence – like potted cacti or women.

I mean, who even decided on the number of cents these leafy disappointments were worth? Why did they land on 18? Did they think that 17 was too cheap, but reasoned that 19 was too steep? Was it a cheap ploy to scam back two cents in the vague hope someone would use actual physical tokens of currency to pay for them? When there’s no such thing as a two cent coin anymore, you really do have to wonder whether these supermarket giants haven’t conspired with the government to scrap the metallic disc in a bid to get out of having to give change for figures such as these. They’re all in this together I tell you!

Or was this some kind of sick psychological experiment? Were the flowers marked down so heavily so scholars could keep a tally of the people who chose to buy the haggard but very reasonably priced decorative items, and draw conclusions from our similarities? Did buying them mean I was forever to be a member of the loser group?

All this was going through my head as I stood there at the buckets of flowers actually pondering whether I could justify the purchase. I saw there were two bunches in the bucket for 18 cents, so I grabbed them both. Clutching them in my arm, I began interrogating myself with the gusto of Iced T in the questioning room fresh off the back of a dramatic arrest scene.

Was I being too decadent?

You already have a bunch for 30 cents in your basket, should you really be spending more?

How can you live with yourself, man?

Even though the pollen from the very, very ripe flowers was now yellowing my hair, I put them back. I was being silly. I was being reckless with the contents of my purse. Who did I think I was, one of those Jenner sisters?

Thirty seconds later I picked them up again, after the thought struck me that I probably wouldn’t be able to change my mind again and come back for them, because some other savvy bastard would have snatched them up. I also reminded myself that it was going to cost me less than 40 cents to brighten up my room and, by extension, my meaningless existence.

I decided that I needed to follow my heart if I was ever going to find happiness. I had to listen to my instincts. I needed to trust myself. Hesitation was only going to slow me down, and let opportunities dissolve right in front of me. The time for boldness was now.

Two minutes later, I put a whole wheel of brie in my basket.

I’m becoming far too involved in the lives of the people who sell me food.

The other night I was in the line in the 12 Items or Less aisle in my local supermarket. There are a few in the store, but at this time of the night there was only one open. The lady in front of me had clearly violated the universal treaty of shopping by filling up her trolley and high tailed it to the 12 Items or Less – I wanted to throw a box of soot-covered sparrows at her face. As I watched this woman take 17 years to bloody unload her unauthorised amount of grocery items on to the register conveyor belt I wanted to lance her multiple cartons of long life milk with a burning icicle. I essentially wanted to boil her childhood pet in front her eyes while shouting out Game of Thrones spoilers.

Thankfully, I was told I could go to the other register, where a supermarket attendant – let’s call him Steve – was ready for action. He had yet to remove his the little sign that politely tells shoppers to bugger off, but began scanning my impulse-buy avocados anyway. Some 30 seconds later another shopper arrived at the scene.

Another Shopper, to Steve: Are you opening up?

Steve: *makes grunting noise to indicate his register was open

Me, to Steve: Emotionally?

We both giggled, but Steve didn’t give me an answer.

This reluctance to answer could mean one of two things. Perhaps, for him, that book had closed long ago. Perhaps the heart beating in his chest was a mere pump concerned only with circulating blood around his veins. Perhaps the ventricle in charge for pulsating feelings had collapsed into a rusty mess or had seized completely.

If so, I can only hope my probing question was the first drop of oil on to that vital machinery. A quick Google search tells me that fixing an engine that has seized due to a lack of oil is generally impossible. But a Gas Engine Magazine article from 2003 says you can try, and something called “penetrating oil” is the answer. And I think Gary’s on to something

“Start by shooting oil down into the cylinder through the spark plug hole, and don’t be shy – use a lot of the stuff,” the writer called Gary says. Now, if I’m applying Gary’s advice to a seized feelings motor, I’m going to have to use emotionally penetrating oil. And because I enjoy taking metaphors too far, I’m going to classify “emotionally penetrating oil” as any verbal or visual cue directed at lubricating the cogs which control the hatch trapping emotions in the recipient’s brain to open the trapdoor just enough for a few feelings to escape. This could be anything that might prompt a recollection of a feeling or bring an important memory to the surface, but I just have to be careful to keep things happy. So emotionally penetrating oils could include comments about babies or a grandmothers baking or Colin Firth – anything that could elicit some kind of warm sentiment. And, if I go with Gary’s counsel, I really shouldn’t be shy (this shouldn’t be a problem).

Gary goes on to say, “spray some [oil] in every day for about two weeks…”. So it looks like I’m going to have to make my shopping trips much more frequent if I want to see any results. I’m obviously going to have to come up with an extensive list of conversation topics. I’m going to have to keep multiple puppy videos saved on my phone. Not to mention all the bright colours I’m going to have to incorporate into my wardrobe. It will be a lot a work, but Gary reckons it’s worth it, advising, “if you’ve been patient, and if the engine wasn’t too badly rusted, it will usually break free…”

And that’s what I want to see. I want to see Steve’s soul break free. I want to cause this checkout boy’s heart bust out its rusty cage of misery and soar gaily over the registers and out the automatic doors, leaving a shimmering trail of ecstasy in its wake. I want to witness it with my very eyes, and perhaps recount the scene to news cameras. That’s the goal I’m working towards.

On the other hand, he could have declined to respond to my question because he didn’t know me and didn’t want to engage in an uncomfortable conversation about his personal state with a complete stranger. In which case, the next two weeks are going to be a testing time for Steve.

*I am being signed up for a loyalty club to save a whole seven dollars off my six pack of cider.

Me: *tells chatty loyalty club sign-up guy my birthday as he fills in my personal details.

Chatty Loyalty Club Sign-up Guy: Wow. You have the exact same birthday as my sister.

Me: Is she a cool as me?

Chatty Loyalty Club Sign-up Guy: No.

Me: Is she a giant loser?

Chatty Loyalty Club Sign-up Guy: …We don’t talk anymore. She hasn’t spoken to me in years.

Me *Saddened, but supremely thrilled that I have been put in a position in which I can mend the sorrows of a complete stranger with some deep, uplifting words. Searches soul to come up with bittersweet wisdom gained from my years as a profoundly emotionally-attuned person to ease this young man’s pain and point him to the path of healing and forgiveness. Runs through extensive vocabulary to couch my soothing sentiment in sensitivity and a touch of poetic flair.

Me: Wow. She IS a loser.