Preparation H anyone? Bio to Bs

A few years ago when Barry and I were shopping at our favorite grocery store, we had a not fun thing happen. They had just installed a new check out system that announced each product as they scanned it. The volume was up pretty high, probably so people could hear it over the chatter and noises of a large grocery store.

Allow me to backtrack for a moment. At the time, we had the sweetest dog ever, a beautiful Bearded Collie named, Lacy. Unfortunately, through no fault of her own, she had an addiction to Pup-peroni treats.

Back to my story...so Barry and I go to one of the checkout stations with our basket of groceries. In order to help feed Lacy’s addiction, we had a ton of dog treats. When the checker started scanning the treats, it kept saying Pup-peroni…Pup-peroni…Pup-peroni…the more times that the computer said it…the more people started looking at us. At first I think people thought that the computer had gone into a loop.

 

Eventually, everyone in the front of the store had stopped talking, the other checkers had stopped checking and all you could hear was PUP-PERONI…PUP-PERONI…PUP-PERONI… Everyone was looking at us, like we were the proverbial “cat lady” or in this case the “dog gentleman” and “dog lady.” Finally, our checker entered the last one. We quickly paid and hurried out of the store.

When we got to the car I said, “That was embarrassing. Should we start looking for another store?”

Barry replied, “I love that store, maybe we could just start buying our Pup-peroni somewhere else. It could have been worse, we could have been buying Preparation H.”

To that I replied, “We should probably buy that somewhere else too. Maybe we should start a list of things not to buy here.” I have a feeling we weren’t the only ones humiliated by the talking checkout system because the next week when we went back, the volume was so low, it was barely audible…and a few weeks later, there was no talking checkout.

So now, we can proudly march to the checkout station with our cart of Pup-peroni, Preparation H, super absorbent tampons, roach spray and generic gallon bottles of wine. Okay, we don’t drink, but we might have needed to start if they had kept the talking check-out system.