Leon

 

   After a Russian MiG fighter pilot defected to the US during the Cold War, he was taken on a tour of an American supermarket. The Russian, having grown up in a world of scarcity and shortages, thought the store had been staged for his benefit. No, he was told, this is how it is here. You made the right choice landing your plane here.

   I appreciate the abundance and variety of foods available even in a remote place like Roseau. I am grateful to the farmers, truck drivers and the efficient bureaucrats who make it all possible. Now that I've said that, I'm going to whine about the checkout process. Some of the cashiers are great. You can have a true human interaction with them. But many are too busy chatting with the adjacent cashier to see me as more than a credit card. "Tap it again, dear."

   So I was delighted when our store installed self-checkout stations. There was a learning curve at first, but there was a staff person to make things right. There are six stations but two are always closed. The store discovered their staff person could only deal with four customers at a time. Supermarkets report that shoplifting is sixteen times more likely at self-checkout lanes vs cashier lanes, though that figure is probably only two or three times more likely in Roseau.

   I don't see how I could shoplift even if I wanted to. As soon as I scan an item, a robot tells me to put my item in the bag. My bag sits on a scale which knows how much my item weighs, unless I buy something like a packet of  Hot & Spicy Szechwan Seasoning Mix which is too light to register on the scale. Then the robot tells me to put the last scanned item in the bag. I don't typically swear, but this is the moment I come closest. The yellow bar over my station lights up and the attendant takes notice and starts towards me, but the machine realizes Szechwan Seasoning is a featherlight item and tells me to continue scanning.

  The machine often locks up for some unknown reason. I must wait for the attendant to swipe his or her card and I wonder if I'm saving time in the long run by doing it myself, especially when I have to find and punch in the little numbers stuck on fruit and vegetables. Bananas are 4011. 

   For the first year or so, the self-checkout attendant was a retiree named Leon. Often, as I was scanning my items and if it was quiet, Leon would drift over and chat. He liked to talk about his trailer at the lake and would tell me how things were going up there. He worked during the week so he had weekends free. His permanent home was in the trailer park adjacent to the store so he had an easy commute to work. The lake place was an hour away. Leon drove semi during his working career. His wife was dead but he had family in the area.

   One day Leon said he was getting rid of his trailer at the lake. The rent had gotten too high. Soon after, he told me he had sold his trailer and his boat and was thinking of moving to western North Dakota where his son lived. He said his daughter-in-law told him he could work in the store out there if he wanted.

   I noticed Leon was never at the store anymore and Duane, his replacement, confirmed that Leon had quit and moved west. Not long after that I noticed a pulpit-like device had been installed overlooking the checkout stations. Duane said they could fix customer problems from this device without having to run over to the individual stations. Duane said the staff had named it "Leon".

  Just the other day I spotted Leon shopping in the store. He said he missed his family in Roseau and had moved back. I asked if he was coming back to work. He said he was thinking about it. I hope he does. Duane is great, but if he's having a conversation with me, and he spots someone he knows better, he'll switch his chat to them. Leon would never do that.

Unreasonable facsimile of Leon