Scan yourself happy!
Photo: dpa/Swen Pförtner
Recently, when I was at the discount store checkout when I was putting my purchases from the checkout conveyor belt into my backpack, which was in my shopping cart, the following happened: The man at the checkout pointed at them with a sheepish sideways glance as he pulled the products over the scanner baguette in a paper bag sticking out of my backpack that I had bought half an hour earlier in another supermarket. “Is that ours too?” he asked me in a half-threatening, half-hostile tone, to which I replied that I had bought the bread in question somewhere else. The cashier looked at me in disbelief.
I interrupted my packing without further ado, took the baguette out of my backpack and threw it in front of him with a gesture intended to convey contempt. Then I pointed with my index finger at the label stuck to the paper bag, which clearly showed the price and name of the competing supermarket. “Do you see that?” I asked. »Is this possibly proof enough that I didn’t steal €1.29 worth of shit here, in your Netto market? Or do you call the police now and I call my lawyer?” They should get to know me.
»It’s your fault! When you came in here, you should have shown the bread you bought somewhere else to the staff to avoid such misunderstandings.’
Active citizen at the discounter checkout
Because it’s not enough that I’m regularly asked by the cashier every time I go shopping if I could just “quickly” lift my backpack that’s in the cart so that they can see whether I underneath I’m hiding stolen goods – now I’m also being accused of doing so im Backpack smuggle baked goods out, possibly to generously feed the homeless and communists afterwards.
“I have to ask,” the cashier replied. “In the end, my job depends on it.” Before I could answer that, the woman who was standing behind me in line and who had already impatiently pushed her car into the back of my knees suddenly intervened. A hard-working active citizen of the first class, 100 percent authoritarian character. The kind of person who, in times of fascism, points out to the police where those who still need to be deported live. Turning to me she scolded: “It’s your fault! You should have shown the bread you bought somewhere else to the staff when you came in here to avoid such misunderstandings.’
I gave up. I didn’t answer but picked up my backpack and left.
I’m not sure that in a better future, food should be treated differently: instead of being sold by corporations, it should be distributed by the Revolutionary Council.
The good column
Private
Thomas Blum fundamentally disagrees with the prevailing so-called reality. He won’t be able to change her for the time being, but he can reprimand her, admonish her or, if necessary, give her a beating. So that the bad begins to retreat. We stand in solidarity with his fight against reality. Therefore, from now on, “The Good Column” will appear here on Mondays. Only the best quality for the best readers! The collected texts can be found at: dasnd.de/diegute
In any case, one thing is certain: supermarkets are among the bleakest places today.
People have long since gotten used to a lot of things: the inhumane neon lighting, the constant blast of advertising to customers, and the exploitation and dehumanization of the people who work there. (In the past, all supermarket employees had a fairly manageable job with breaks in between. Today, a single person has to do the work of three people, has to be available all the time and has to switch between all the tasks until they are completely exhausted: checking out, maneuvering roll containers and pallet trucks through the aisles, etc unloading, clearing goods, giving customers information.)
Not to forget the most German of all inventions: the goods separator, also known as the “goods separator”, which is used to draw boundaries between customers standing behind and in front of you at the checkout and which guarantees that order is maintained on the checkout conveyor belt. There has to be order. Woe to anyone who disregards them by not using a dividing rod!
Many other actions have also become second nature: for example, every time you go shopping, you put a euro into the “coin bar” of the shopping cart like a remote-controlled idiot, then remove it from the chain to which it is attached and put it afterwards Return shopping to the other carts in the covered shopping cart garage. An action that almost all people have internalized, like going to the toilet and washing their hands. You basically act like a trained circus horse. And we learned something else: the dignity of the shopping cart, whose parking lot usually has a roof, is rated higher in this society than that of the beggar who doesn’t have a roof over his head. The integrity of the shopping cart, which must be protected from the effects of the weather, is sacred.
Another innovation that would have been considered real satire during Adorno’s lifetime: the customer who willingly cashes in on his own purchase at a vending machine. The one-dimensional human in perfection. The ideal subject. He is comparable to the delinquent who carries out his punishment on himself. The perfection of what was called the “managed world”: the final liquidation of the individual, the victory of the totality of domination.
The supermarket – no other place exists where you are so reduced to what you essentially are: a slave, a personified bank account, a sheep with a debit card.
We-don’t-give-each-other anything
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