Cash registers in plot to overload wallets

Press, 25 September 1989, Page 20

Cash registers in plot to overload wallets

Wilson’s week

Among the more useless things littering a side pocket of my wallet is a collection of receipts from “intelligent" cash registers. These are machines that not only tell you what you have just purchased, but who sold it to you, the date and time of the purchase, the stock number, with the transaction being rounded off in some instances by the cash register receipt hoping you also have a nice day. This is all very nice and heartwarming, knowing that a cash register cares whether my mood remains buoyant, but it is altogether heartless to admit that frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn? What I do care about is how much it cost to develop this technology, and how much of the cost is built into the item I have just purchased from Shirley the cash register. Shirley? Well these things have become so familiar with the customers, it seems only right to give them a name. The average shop till today has more computer technology built into it than your average deep space probe of two decades ago. Just think,

N.A.S.A. could save billions by sending cash registers out there to make contact with alien life forms and wish them a nice day too. Of course there are those Luddites who will say the intelligent cash register is the work of the devil. Me, I don’t agree, they are just the product of back room whizz kids with Mephistophelean designs. They are part of an elaborate plot to overload the wallets of the consumer society with metre-long receipts that are so detailed, and so technologically advanced, you just cannot bring yourself to consign them to the same sackas the dried up leftovers from the cat’s dinner. This subversive plan (and don’t forget, I was the first to tell you) became glaringly obvious the other day during an infrequent trawl through the contents of my wallet. I was actually looking for dollar bills, an increasingly fruitless exercise when the cat’s vet bill totals more than the weekly grocery account.

Small wonder that in less civilised countries the locals get around this problem by eating the cat. They then have a nice fur hat as a bonus. I found no money, but I did discover a receipt that told me I paid $1.15 for pineapple pieces at a certain supermaket, at 7.25 p.m. on September 15. I also paid 70c for icing sugar and on the list went, and because I know you are dying to hear the rest of this, yes, the toothpaste pump cost $2.93. The receipt reminded me 1 had tendered $5O for the groceries and had received $6.05 in change. A footnote to a. footnote in consumer history, and as I stood there reading this useless reminder of an old shopping expedition, my brain screamed WHY? In some quarters an itemised grocery receipt can be useful. Doubtless there are people who do, or in due course will, collect them as a hobby in the same way that people now offer big money for old tram tickets. In general though

these intelligent cash registers do nothing to advance the cause of civilisation, except perhaps confuse the current occupants of planet Earth. And I believe the com-puter-controlled cash registers have already begun the next phase of their plan to rule us all from some giant computer in Brussels. I have evidence. I was in one of those electrical gadget shops, the kind that specialise in the latest electronic gimmickry sold by enthusiastic young salesmen in their first suit. The cash register was controlled by a computer screen and before the till would open, the salesman had to key in the correct code. There was a small queue and I patiently stood there with my $6.95 video tape. He tapped away, but the till refused to open. He cursed softly under his breath and re-fed the data. Nothing. A bead of perspiration sneaked upon his brow. Tap tap tap again. The till kept its silence and its money. “The computer must

be down” he wailed to a colleague. So the two of them began to work the screen. “Did you see ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’?” I breezily asked them.

“Great film Hal, the computer, killed most of the humans.” They ignored this portent of the future and. feverishly cajoled the computer to do as its

programme ordered it to do. “You know, Woolworths made its fortune with manual cash registers,” I continued. “You pressed two keys and a bell rang and a little metal plate came up and said ‘thank you’ to the customer.” I was trying to be helpful. One of them whacked the machine. That did it. The till opened. Smiling through clenched teeth the young assistant took the money and handed me the video tape and the change. And a receipt. It told me his name, the time this debacle happened, the day on which it happened, and even the name of the computer that caused the debacle. Most importantly, it told me what I had just purchased and how much I had paid for it. I could have looked down and answered those questions for myself, but it was kind of reassuring to know that an intelligent cash register wanted me to forever remember this moment. But probably because somebody whacked it on the head, it did not hope that I had a nice day. — DAVE WILSON.