Recently, a random woman on Facebook decided to start an argument with me over the self-check lanes at the grocery store. This is true because we are Americans and have lost all conception of priorities and proper use of our time.

A friend of mine who’s getting on in years…she’s no spring chicken…she’s getting long in the tooth…she can remember evading dinosaurs on her way to school…she once received a gentleman caller named Taft…she…too much already, posted a “I won’t use the self-checkout because it takes away jobs” meme.

I replied in the meme comments, not her comment feed (I saw too many of my real friends, not FB friends, agreeing with her and wanted to avoid sideways glances at the next Church luncheon) the following (always gives me the warm and fuzzies to quote myself in my own literary content):

“I wonder if this is how people reacted when gas stations stopped being full service. 
Entitlement mentality is an unfortunate offshoot of our prosperity. “

Picture that situation in your mind. A crotchety old person circa 1975 stubbornly sitting in their car, upper lip furiously pursed, refusing to budge until someone fills up their tank, washes their window, and takes their money to the clerk. It only becomes more comedic (and more offensive) if you picture them laying on their horn and demanding “one o’ dem negroes” do it. Such a scene is stupid. Gas stations stopped being full-service around the time it started being harder to turn a profit in the industry. How did they adjust? Well, I’ll tell you, if you’ll keep your top on. They hired fewer employees and asked patrons to pump their own gas. My boys at five years of age were able to accomplish such a feat, and were overjoyed at the prospect of helping daddy. Side note: it’s so much cheaper to be a good father when your kids are young and full of wonderment.

Much of life is a trade-off. You give up one thing, add more work there, and often get an added benefit somewhere else. There wasn’t just a little extra work on the customer’s part. Gas stations started selling more food, installing cleaner bathrooms, and eventually running whole restaurants on the inside. If you ever come to Michigan, I would ask you to visit the Shell Gas Station at Grange Hall Road in Holly off I-75. There, I can get a tank of gas, do my restroom business in cleanly privacy, order a sandwich freshly made by the high-end deli, feast on homemade gourmet treats from local vendors, gorge myself on the customary pre-packaged snacks you see everywhere, peruse a vast selection of wine/beer/liquor (I’m a teetotaler, but still), and devour my food in a comfortable outdoor stone table dining area. I’ve actually taken a date there. Yes, really.

What’s the point? Gas stations knew they had to adapt and so they offered a better experience in trade for having to pull out the nozzle and work it yourself. Now, grocery stores. Those who abide by the social contract and capitalist ideals understand that if they save money by asking one employee to monitor six self-scan stations, they should pass the savings on to the customer by keeping their prices low. They still have to make a profit, but they also have to keep their customers. This day and age, a customer who chooses to be super-informed about a store’s quality can do so without leaving their home, putting on pants, or even having to walk to the family desktop thanks to these little heroin-level addicting computers we keep with us at all times. I’m a landscaping business owner and I know the delicate dance between needing a profit and not bidding yourself out of a job.

If you are entitled to a clerk scanning and bagging your groceries, then go to a Ma and Pop store. Chances are you’ll pay higher prices and deal with less a selection. I don’t buy Kroger brand everything. I never skimp on toilet paper quality (for obvious reasons). Dinner ingredients of consequence do tend to show their difference in quality. But I do buy Kroger brand paprika, green beans, and facial tissues. I can’t do that at Old Man Cranky’s Five-and-Dime. There, I can get more than my share of folksy wisdom and pleasant chatter. I will concede that point.

As I’ve said before in the book I’ve yet to publish (hold your horses, those of you who need something to read now that you’ve finished Lord of the Rings), entitlement mentality is dangerous. Once you’ve convinced yourself you deserve something, there’s no stopping you from convincing yourself you deserve the next step, the next, and so on. Becoming accustomed to something is different than feeling you deserve it. Being accustomed to it means you can adapt when it is no longer available. Feeling you deserve it leads to angry posts and argumentative replies on Facebook (the bane of our productivity).

What’s more, the grocery store is actually serving customers higher levels of convenience with the self-check lanes. Yes, I said it. You wanna fight about it? Let me explain first. I go to the grocery store several times a week. I like to keep just enough in my house to feed me and mine for the next couple of days. I don’t religiously cut coupons and buy the items for sale on the coupons simply “because they are on sale”. My boys and I have a pretty standard and routine set of things we need each week. When it comes to dinners, I like to buy and make enough for that day and maybe the next. I live close to the store and don’t mind going up there a couple times a week.

What I do mind is checkout lanes that are positively stuffed during the 4pm-6pm rush with Doomsday Preppers. What’s worse, Preppers who like to chat or have issues with emptying their carts quickly because they have bad knees or the rheumatism. There’s a wonderful Simpsons episode in which an unemployed Apu advises Marge to go through the line with pathetic single men because they are “Only cash, no chit-chat”. Side note: The loss of Apu on this show is a turning point in history. One would have made the case that The Simpsons was immune to SJW chicanery. The self-checkout lanes provide me a chance to get my weekly gallon of milk, loaf of bread, Pedia-Sure for my Autistic son who redefines “picky eater”, frozen dinners for my boys on the days I’m existing on vegetable smoothies, and any other small items that pop up but only necessitate a hand basket’s load. When I do see a Prepper in the self-checkout lane, I try to restrain my eye-rolling and annoyed groans to a bare minimum.

Now, the bigger argument the aforementioned lady made was one of “supplying jobs”. Ugh, I feel gross talking about this because I know that working a job is an honorable thing. But I must say it. Grocery store jobs are not supplying highly-sought jobs and livable wages to their employees. If you’re a Walmart employee, it’s worse. Your wage qualifies you for government assistance, your employer gives you a discount from their already low prices, and so Walmart becomes a career and the last professional stop for too many young and not-so-young people who could do so much better if they spent their free time learning a trade or attending a college and entering a lucrative career. This lady could have made a stronger argument were she to talk about automation in the car industry taking away human jobs because the car industry was for many years supplying livable wage and benefits. And our unemployment rates are not really affected by self-checkout lanes, because an unskilled worker can find unskilled (or low-skilled, if you prefer) work in any number of retail stores, or cutting lawns for me. And they are supplying jobs of a more lucrative nature to the engineers, factory workers, and skilled tradesman who design, manufacture, and repair these machines, respectively.

Were grocery stores compelled to supply part time employees with livable wages, they’d probably pass the expense on to the customer. I like paying under $4 for my boys’ family size box of Honey Nut Cheerios. They are not obliged to supply a livable wage, neither are you obliged to render them your time and efforts. This is a land of opportunity. Go and grab one by the ears, no matter how vigorously it thrashes about (and then pay me for the mini motivational speech I just gave).

I also don’t buy the “I’m entitled to livable wage on an eight hour workday” argument. Such was not the case when colonialists, farmers, cowpunchers, tradesmen, and explorers were building this country. Nor was it when my Native American ancestors were traveling from place to place looking for easy access to water and hunting game. Just because we’ve become accustomed to an eight hour workday doesn’t mean we deserve it. I’m a single father of four and a teacher. I’ll never be rich on a teacher’s wage, and so when my ledger was found wanting, I delivered pizza, Ubered, and started a lawn business. I’ve worked many a 16-hour workday, then graded and slept when I could. I couldn’t keep that up and expect a healthy body, but I’m not entitled to a body of Ahhnold-esque exceptionalism. God gave me one that, while pudgy in the middle due to my affection for Mountain Dew and Speedway rib sandwiches, does the job just fine. I’m sitting here at 11:30pm on a Tuesday evening right now typing this blog because my lawn business grew to the point where I could take a year off teaching and enjoy some much needed relaxation. But were I to lose all my lawn toys to theft and fire tomorrow, I’d go out and find a teaching job, along with a part-time low-skilled one in the service industry. Once you’ve freed yourself from the idea that you’re owed anything, it truly is freeing, in the emotional and spiritual sense.

I’ve not graced this world with my existence, nor will it very much miss my absence. That’s a wonderful thought in terms of what I need to do to hack it out of the corner of this earth I’ve been bequeathed.