A man in his late forties is stuffing receipts into a note feeder.
At a grocery store self-checkout, a man in his late forties is stuffing receipts into a note feeder. There is no mix up here, his actions are rehearsed and premeditated. He has collected a few other receipts left behind by past customers and is shoving them, with some enviable gusto, into a slit with an unambiguous signage "Notes". There are no two ways about it, I am a witness to an act of rebellion. Trouble is, I really have no idea what he is rebelling against.
He's not being particularly upfront about his agenda and makes no demands. As he turns to look at me, his mischievous grin looses none of its luster. I attempt to return something resembling an understanding nod but my befuddlement must have betrayed me, for instead of inducting me into a secretive brotherhood of man, he just turns around and walks out of the store.
What was that all about?
Perhaps he's part of the Luddite movement, and like Ned Ludd before him, this 'Ned' has turned against the machines. Of course the principle issue of all reasonable Luddites of all ages isn't with the machines or technological advancement that they represent but the deteriorating working conditions of the labour force. Visit your nearest bank branch and you'll be greeted by employees who's sole job it is to show you how to use the machines around you. A knowledge that, once imparted, makes their job obsolete. If so, understandably annoyed store employee who will have to deal with this particular instance of trade blockade will be oblivious to the noble causes of the sabotage at hand.
But then perhaps I am giving him too much credit as a defender of the labour force. Maybe his gripe is with the self-checkout machine itself, in which case he has my complete and utter sympathy. As modern grocery store checkout experiences go, one has to choose between two evils - queuing or a machine that accuses you of having unidentified items in the bagging area. By a conservative estimate, self-checkouts are responsible for about 80% of my daily cursing. I am appreciative of the machine, I just hate the utter misuse of the piece of design that places two prongs with bags above the bagging area. Natural inclination is to place items directly into the bag suspended on the prongs. This would be the case had the machine been designed by a reasonable person. Instead, it was designed by a sadist who would have you place items on the platform obscured by the bags only to bag them later. So natural is the inclination, that after a decade of using self-checkouts I still get it wrong at least once a week.
Another plausible explanation comes from J---. When I mentioned the morning's events, he recalled demonstrations that took place outside of his local Co-op last year. It had something to do with Co-op's refusal to purchase goods produced in Israeli settlements on the West Bank. Conscious of how ill-equipped I am to discuss implications of this particular possibility, I chose to adopt a position commonly attributed to Douglas Adams.
What was that all about? I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer.