Plum-bing The Depths Of The Self-Checkout

Some years ago, when self-checkout registers were still a new thing, I was waiting in line behind a middle-aged lady who was struggling to use the self-checkout machine. She didn’t have any problems with scanning her items that had bar codes but she was really struggling with the fresh produce.

After five or ten minutes of waiting, I was contemplating going to a checkout lane with a cashier. Then, the lady started muttering to herself, poking angrily at the touch screen, and grumbling about how useless these machines were. Eventually, she started speaking loud enough for me to hear her.

Lady: “Plum, Plum, Plum… Why don’t they have it listed? This machine is just crap! I don’t know why they can’t just hire more workers so I don’t have to do this.”

I looked at the produce bag she was holding, peeked at the screen, and realized her problem.

Me: “Maybe you should look under tomatoes.”

She looked at me, looked at her bag of plum tomatoes, and looked at the touchscreen, which was displaying a picture of plums, the fruit.

She went completely quiet, turned beet red, hurried through the rest of the transaction, and quickly fled.