I went into Tesco today to buy a few oddments, and as I had a lot of loose change in my pocket I decided to pay by cash. I waited for a Cash and Card till to be free and went about my business.
The bill was £10.80, so I loaded 80p worth of loose change into the machine and waited for confirmation (supermarket tills are notoriously slow at simple addition.) And then I placed a £10 note into the requisite slot – which the machine accepted – and waited for confirmation again. The machine remained silent and inscrutable, save for a message on the screen which read:
I waited a while longer, but in vain. It asked me whether I wished to continue. I pressed ‘Yes.’ And then it asked me again (and again.) Eventually it switched its red light on and an assistant came bustling over. I explained the situation to her, carefully maintaining a calm countenance in an effort to reassure her that I was not a shoplifter and really had given the machine a £10 note.
She took out a bundle of keys, opened the door of the recalcitrant piece of technology, and proceeded to extract a pot with a yellow lid. She seemed to be expecting to find a £10 note trapped in it, but the pot was empty.
The assistant explained to me that access to the deeper recesses would be necessary, and that such access required a magic key, a key so important that only the manager is allowed possession of it. The minutes ticked by as I waited. It’s what minutes usually do, and so I steeled myself to be patient. Eventually the manager arrived clutching the magic key, and he was not a he but a she.
She proceeded to dismantle various items of the machine’s intestines, but remained silent. I mentioned that I was becoming a little frustrated by the fact that everything seems to be broken these days. No reply. I suggested that the machine might have been on the gin again. Still no reply. She opened a different pot containing lots of banknotes, the top one of which was probably mine because it had a light crease down the middle where it had been folded in my pocket. She remained not only silent, but as inscrutable as the machine.
She faffed and firked with the machine’s innards. She pressed button after button on the screen. She began to frown and look bewildered. Eventually she took out a note and coins to the value of £10.80 and instructed the lackey to put my shopping through another till. Said lackey emptied my bag and scanned the contents through a different, and presumably stone cold sober, machine, and replaced the items in my bag. (I was a little concerned that my bag was of the Sainsbury’s variety, not Tesco. I asked her whether she was afraid of developing a rash if she touched it. She smiled and said something unintelligible and then the matter was concluded. She handed me the bag of shopping and a receipt which I presumed amounted to permission to leave the store.
I touched the manager’s arm and said ‘thank you for your efforts’ just because I’m nice like that. ‘You’re welcome,’ she replied. She might have said ‘sorry about the trouble; thank you for your patience’ (because the whole episode had taken around 15 constantly ticking minutes), but she didn’t. This is the corporate world we’re dealing with, so maybe that’s not so surprising.
I walked out of the store half expecting to be apprehended by security, but there was no security visible. I expect it’s an economy measure. Or maybe the payroll program is broken and he’s got another job which pays cash. Who can tell?
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