Help, I am trying to give you my money

A short tale of a lone late-night designer-dad shopping trip gone wrong and the challenges designers face in balancing design, technology and the human condition.

This is a boring story about interesting things (if you are a designer, or have ever bought anything from any store, ever).

“Are you still doing ok?” asked the woman in a red vest. Her smile was somewhere between sympathy and pity. Under the fluorescent lights it felt more than a little melancholy. Neither of us wanted to be there.

“Still doing fine.” I said and kept pushing my cart among the aisles.

A shower caddy. That was the last item on my long list. I found it in aisle D 24 of the Bath section of a Target store somewhere in the banal sprawl of suburban America. It was 8:30 PM on a weekday and the store was nearly vacant. I balanced my final item atop a tower of accoutrements piled high in my shopping cart and swung it all around, eager to end this lonely shopping excursion.

I approached the checkout lanes with the sadness that overcomes me with mass material consumption. At the far end, the only illumination was four self-checkout stations. I took a deep breath and leaned into the cart handles, pushing towards the light.

“Yo. You paying with a credit card?” A voice asked me.

In my periphery, I thought he was a mannequin. The twenty-something was slouched over a tiny podium holding an Android phone with some scanner hardware attached.

“I can.” I replied cautiously.

“Cool. I can get you here.” He said. He sounded equally intelligent and apathetic. Which is to say, he seemed like a bonafide employee.

“Here?” I asked. “Right here?” It appeared to be a variation of a “Skip The Line” booth that was heralded a couple years back during the holiday season.

Before I could object, he approached and began untangling items out of my cart, and scanning them one by one. He delicately bagged each thing and placed it on the floor. Eventually I became surrounded and amazed, standing among a dozen or more sacks about my feet. I straddled the Mr. Coffee…