Price Wars

I love using the self-service checkouts at supermarkets and other stores, but I just hate that woman's voice (almost as much as I hate the way anyone talks when doing the voiceover for reality TV shows – not that I watch them, of course). "Please scan your clubcard"; "Select payment type, or enter cash" etc. It really gets on my nerves when she repeatedly urges me to "Please remove your card from the card reader" when I've already done so and I just want to grab my receipt and get the hell out of there. That woman is the spawn of the devil, so she is.

However, today I witnessed her behaving with such insensitivity that I almost had to laugh. A young woman was in front of me in Tesco this evening and, having carefully scanned her various bottles of wine, shampoo, instant rice pack and other detritus of student living, she dutifully obeyed the woman's instructions to 'select payment type' and inserted her card. Imagine her horror and shame when the woman's voice boomed out for all to hear: "Please select another payment type. Card Invalid. Please select another payment type. Card Invalid."

Wouldn't it be enough to display this information discreetly on the screen of the card reader? Is it absolutely necessary to shout out this information so that the assembled (now hushed) crowd can't fail to hear it? Do we really have to witness this poor girl's shame and embarrassment, and watch as her body visibly shrinks in some desperate bid to disappear into a hole in the ground? I think not. It's a disgraceful invasion of a person's dignity.

So, I'm going to invent a new machine that starts talking back. It will respond to the bleep of the scanner and yell out some truths of its own. "Four pounds fifty for some blatantly over-priced washing powder"; "One pound thirty-seven for green beans that an African farmer was paid two pence to produce"; "Three ninety-nine for a bottle of wine which it is claimed has been reduced from an inflated price of eight ninety-nine, but which actually should retail at two pounds fifty." That sort of thing.

This could be fun. Do you think I will get this machine patented?