Talking Shop

Talking Shop
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday August 9, 2014

Grocery shopping isn’t as fun as it used to be. My local Coles is efficient, but impersonal and bland. I hanker for the shopping strips of my childhood, when a tray of fresh peaches smelt of the sun. Mum would test the ripeness of a rockmelon by lifting it up and pressing her nose against the fragrant dimple where the vine once fed the stalk.

In 1975, all the shopkeepers in my suburb knew me by name. Even when Tracy Sabitay and I got sprung trying to light matches in the laneway behind Mr Rudrum’s electrical shop, Mr Pearlman the pharmacist had no trouble identifying us: “Well, well, well. Tracy and Rosalind I see! Shall we put away the matches or shall I call your mothers?”

The butcher was my favourite proprietor. His name was Mr Butcher, one of those rare but happy marriages between identity and occupation. He was an amiable fellow with a Tom Selleck moustache and Magnum PI’s patience with the lady customers, who vacillated about whether to grace the dinner table with steak or rissoles.

From Monday to Friday Mr Butcher wore a shirt and tie under his blue and white striped apron. On Saturdays, when there were no carcasses to joint, Mr Butcher was luminous in a white coat and matching apron.

Aged eight, I asked Mum about the one-knuckled stump on his left hand where his rude finger should’ve been: “How do you know about the rude finger!” she demanded.

I shrugged.

“Well,” she said, “I know for a fact that when Mr Butcher was three, he put his finger into his father’s mincing machine.”

That story seemed too innocent. As a budding drama queen, I could invent far more bloodthirsty whodunits to explain that missing digit. On our twice-weekly visits to Mr Butcher’s, I took to hoisting myself onto the handbag rail so I could rest my chin on the counter. From there, I could direct all the action.

Enter Ned Kelly stage right. With a metal bucket on his head, I’d have him burst through the door brandishing a rifle as long as his beard: “Gimme all your money!” he’d yell and we customers would dive under the counter. Hearing the commotion, Mr Butcher’d come charging out of the coolroom with a joint over his shoulder and belt the robber over the head with eight pounds of pot roast. ‘BANG!’ The gun’d go off. The bullet ricocheted off the till and tunnelled through Mr Butcher’s hand. I watched in horror as his bloodied finger somersaulted through the air in slow motion. It bounced along the floor, rolling over and over in the sawdust until it came to rest, perfectly disguised as a crumbed sausage.

Satisfied with my ingenuity, I took to being mesmerised by Mr Butcher’s knifework instead. He did his jointing on the lopsided chopping block, a waist-high round cut from a big karri tree. Always chopping from the higher, smoother side of the block, he inched his remaining fingers ahead of his cleaver as he carved up a side of lamb. With a flourish, he whipped out a long slender blade from the knife pouch dangling from his butcher’s belt. Slicing off a rind of white fat, he deftly trimmed the gristle and voila! a dozen lamb chops would be sitting neatly curled on his pad of butcher’s paper. Rolling up the parcel, he leaned over the counter and presented the package to Mum. “There you go, Mrs Thomas, will you be needing some silverside today?”

Like all butcher shops, ours smelled of raw meat and the sawdust that soaked up the drips and drops of scraps that missed the bin. My childish nostrils were easily offended. Following Mum in through Mr Butcher’s front door, I’d screw up my face to block the cloying scent, which vanished as soon as he offered me a slice of polony.

Mr Butcher was the master of customer service. He’d slip into an easy banter about the weather: “Still stifling out there Mrs Fry? When will this heatwave end?”

But then the talk would turn to Vietnam and the Watergate tapes. Or Malcolm Fraser ousting Billy Snedden and my smarts would falter and I’d begin to study the creases on the back of Mrs Fry’s neck.

Even now, I like my service personalised. Grocery shopping has become a chore. But the owner of my nearby supermarket franchise has the gift for making shoppers feel special. He delights his elderly customers by offering to carry their bags to the car. He’ll pack their groceries into the boot, making sure the egg carton is secure, then walk around and open their driver’s door: “See you Friday Mrs Wheeler!” Then he’ll turn to my youngsters riding shotgun on my trolley: “And did you two help Mum today?” They giggle and fib but he gives them a Freddo Frog anyway. They’ll be his customers for life.

Robo-Shop of Horrors

Robo-Shop of Horrors
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday March 8, 2014

I am being bullied by a machine who delights in being a shrew. We were wary of each other at first, that self-serve checkout and I. I tried not to think of her as a dictatorial tin can. I scolded myself for feeling intimidated by her sophisticated touch-screen interface and her beeping castigations. After all, she was one of a dozen talking robots designed to speed me through my  supermarket. We should have been friends. But it was clear from the start she had no interest in our relationship.

Maybe her automated woman’s intuition sensed my electronic incompetence. Perhaps she enjoyed lauding her artificial intelligence over my evolutionary one. Every time we met, she stared at me with her omnipotent eye, awaiting my first move.

I was moving all right – with both hands I was cartwheeling and somersaulting my Shortbread Creams in desperate pursuit of a bar code. Just as I finally located it on the inside of the underside flap, she announced loudly in a patronising tone: “Please scan your first item.” Her voice had the kind of velvety smugness my husband finds attractive. I felt a hot rush of jealousy. How dare she speak to me this way – me, the customer she was built to serve! I was on war footing with the talking robot at Coles.

I slapped my bananas onto her scale. “Key in item’s code or look up item” she demanded. I dutifully selected bananas while muttering about her lack of prepositions.

“How many?” she wanted to know.

“Can’t you see, cyclops?” I gloated. She was silent. I rolled my eyes and tapped in the number six.

 “Place item in bagging area.” I obediently dropped the bananas into the bag. She paused. “Unidentified item in bagging area” she said. I lifted up the bananas and let them fall in again.  “Item is not in bagging area.”

“Yes it is!” I shouted. “They’re right there! In the bag! Are you stupid?”

And then above her annoyingly square head she flicks her green beacon to an angry red.

I am trapped between this ogress and my overflowing trolley. I swivel my head  trying to catch the attention of a human in uniform. I see the shoppers behind me shift impatiently from one foot to the other. A young mother tears open a packet of Maltesers to pacify her whingeing toddler but the bag splits and the contents shower the floor.

I hail the blue-haired checkout boy from aisle six who raises his index finger to indicate he’s on his way. He plonks a plastic triangle on his conveyor belt that reads: ‘Let us serve you at another location.’ His next-in-line customer sends me eye-daggers.

Teenage employee arrives at my stalled machine and huffs: “The self-service attendant just ducked off to the loo. Bloody machines can’t fix anything by themselves!” He swipes the screen with a plastic card and my electronic she-devil springs to life.

“Please scan your next item,” she says to me sweetly, but I know she’s just flirting with the checkout boy, because he pats her stainless steel rump and trudges back to his cash register.

I am now embarrassed by the holdup. I resume scanning the contents of my trolley knowing a dozen pairs of impatient eyes are boring into my back.

“Remove unidentified object from bagging area” the she-robot barks.

“No,” I whisper urgently. “That’s the complimentary packet of pegs attached to this new washing powder.”

But she’s not buying my story and gleefully jams on her red light. I turn a shade of tomato myself. This can’t be happening! I lift out the washing powder and thrust the peg packet roughly up against her inky screen. “See!” I hiss. “They’re stapled on. The pegs come with it. It’s a sales gimmick!” And in a fit of pique I give her a secret kick with my left sneaker but she doesn’t flinch under her metal skirt. 

The self service attendant, fresh from his toilet stop, marches over: “I saw that,” he chides me. I gaze across at the manned checkouts and realise every customer I began with has finished and gone. I look to my right; my neighbour is also looking aggrieved. His machine’s red light is now blinking a slow waltz with mine. “Having fun yet?” I say.

“I just want this damn packet of chewing gum!” he says. “It doesn’t weigh enough to register.”  

“I’ve had it up to pussy’s bow with my machine, too. She’s been giving me a hiding.”

He nods sympathetically and points to his fem-bot who is chanting: ‘Select from popular items or look up item alphabetically.’

“With that kind of attitude,” he says, “no wonder she’s still on the shelf.”