There is however, a glitch in the otherwise flawless system. Grocery store developers forgot about old people, and how no matter how hard they try and learn how to operate any form of technology that isn't their TV's remote control they simply cannot comprehend how it works. They cannot understand that a computer only performs work when told to do so and its logic is based upon a pre-defined list of actions that cannot be altered on-the-fly without some form of interaction from its programmer.

While grocery shopping today, I had to wait in line for about 5 minutes while the stragglers from the senior citizen bus parked outside finished doing their daily shopping and were attempting to check out. One old guy to my left was trying to scan the same coupon for what seemed to be 3 minutes, another older woman was looking at her produce trying to find the number on the sticker so she could key it in, and another was trying to figure out where to put the bills in once she was done scanning everything. I swore it looked like she was trying to put it in the receipt printer.

With that said, there should either be an age limit imposed for those who can use such pieces of technology, or an extensive training class in which customers must watch a brief video and then later pass a test proving that they understood what they have just been shown.

Needless to say, I walked out of the grocery store with a total of one item and it took me less than 30 seconds to check out and pay once I was able to get to the terminal.

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