Monday, April 13, 2020

The Sainsbury's Checkout Dream

Dream fodder is thin on the ground at the moment and this post is very boring.
Last night I dreamt that I was at the checkout at the supermarket, trying to pay for my shopping. The checkout was more like a stainless steel chute that a flat normal checkout, and you had to wait until the person in front of you had paid before you could shove your shopping down the slide.
Someone walked up and added a banana to my pile of provisions, and everyone had to explain that he shouldn't do that.
I think the person before me had mostly onions.
It got to my turn and the woman at the checkout (who looked remarkably like someone who has been annoying in real life), strolled over and told me the checkout was closing now, and she couldn't understand why anyone used the checkouts with assistants, when the self-checkouts were so easy and just over there. I started the usual pious speech about keeping people's jobs by making sure I paid at manned checkouts but I could see she wasn't listening, and gave up after the first sentence.
There was someone at every single self-service checkout. Whenever anyone was finished there, the checkout they had been at went out of service.
I waited, and waited, and waited.
Finally, I managed to find an available one. I piled up my bananas and raspberries ready to scan. There was a complex log-in process and I did that, then searched for the code for bananas on the electronic price list.
As soon as I found them, I typed it in and then got taken back to the log-in page. Over and over again.
I looked at the raspberries. They were soggy and mouldy and had bits in that could have been dead insects.
I looked at the bananas.
They were squashed and soft and under-ripe at the same time.
I gave up, left them there in the supermarket dripping rancid juice all over the checkout, and went for the bus.
There were no buses. I wasn't where I thought I was.
All I could do was wake up.

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