Man vs. Machine

It started innocently enough.  I needed to run to the store for a few things, my husband offered to go with me, and I relented.

"What do you mean, relented.  You should be ecstatic that he offered to go with you!"

"You don't really understand--there was that one time in Wal-mart when he picked up something out of the cart and asked me if I needed that!"

"How long ago was that?"

"Maybe a few years ago--but I'm sure my daughter remembers."

So anyway back to my original story, we made it through Publix fine--no problems.  Then we decided to stop at Winn Dixie and look at hams--big special going on there.  We picked up two hams and headed for the self check-out line.  As we neared the machine, something was nagging in the back of my mind and my neck started to tingle. 

I walk up and press that I would like the machine to speak to me in English.  Then it happened--my husband, moving as fast as lightening, started to rub one of the hams back and forth--very quickly.  It took, but then he tossed it into the bag and jerked the bag off of the clips--therefore moving it off of the scale.

"PLEASE PUT THE ITEM BACK ONTO THE SCALE,"  screamed the machine.

My husband proceeded to talk back to the machine, trying to convince it that he had already scanned the item.  I immediately had a flashback to this same machine a year ago as we were buying up all of the canned pumpkins at the time--now I understood why my neck was tingling.

"Honey, put it back on the scale--please!"

"PLEASE SCAN YOUR WINN DIXIE CARD AT THIS MOMENT," screamed the machine--again.

Before I could stop him, he was scanning the second ham--but using the reflection part of the machine as the scanner.  I'm trying to tell him the bottom part is the scanner--as he was slamming the ham against the machine.  Then it happened---

"PLEASE CONTACT AN ASSOCIATE--PLEASE CONTACT AN ASSOCIATE!"

By this time all eyes were on us (again) and the defeat was hard to swallow.  The associate had to reset us and then I could pay.  As we are walking out I'm thinking--be calm, this is what love is all about, remember all of your studies--try to impart some calm wisdom upon this person.

As I calmly explain how to use the machine and what he was doing wrong--he calmly looked at me and replied, "But I never have any trouble when I'm by myself!"

I need a few days to recover, maybe I'll go back and read a few of my posts again!