TIFU by pretending I knew how to use a self-checkout machine
This happened a few hours ago and I’m still embarrassed thinking about it. I stopped at a grocery store after work because I only needed like 4 things: bread, eggs, chicken, and drinks. The regular checkout lines were insanely long, so I figured I’d use self-checkout even though I honestly hate those machines. Now here’s the problem: I had never bought produce at self-checkout before. Ever. Usually the cashier does all that weird weighing stuff. I grab a few bananas because they looked good and head over to the machine trying to act confident. There’s people behind me waiting, so naturally my brain stopped functioning. I scan everything fine until the bananas.
The machine asks me to “Select Item.” Suddenly there are 400 different banana options.
Organic banana.
Organic small banana.
Fair trade banana.
Plantain.
Single banana.
Yellow banana.
Bro what.
I panic and randomly choose one.
Machine instantly says:
“Unexpected item in bagging area.”
Employee comes over and fixes it. Cool. Embarrassing, but survivable. Then I somehow accidentally scan the bananas AGAIN while trying to move them, and now it says I have 14 pounds of bananas. The total jumps up by like $38. At this point people are staring because the machine keeps loudly yelling for assistance every 10 seconds. Another employee walks over, cancels the bananas, and asks if I’m paying separately for the drinks because apparently I left them on the scanner instead of bagging them. While she’s fixing THAT issue, I try to help by moving my eggs out of the way. Dropped them. Not one egg survived. The employee just closes her eyes for like 3 seconds straight like she’s questioning her career choices. Then somehow my card declines because I transferred money to savings earlier and forgot. So after causing an entire self-checkout scene for like 15 minutes, I had to awkwardly transfer money between accounts while holding a leaking carton of eggs.
The dude waiting behind me finally goes:
“First day on Earth?”
Honestly fair enough.
TL;DR: Tried using self-checkout confidently despite not knowing how produce works, accidentally bought $38 worth of bananas, destroyed my eggs, held up the line, and got roasted by a stranger.