I
used to believe that an old person – someone who
was, say, 62 – would give anything to be young again.
Not just to look 20, but to be 20. Only now do I realise
how wrong I was. While I wouldn’t mind an
unshrivelled face and a full head of hair, wouldn’t
mind new feet – as my current ones are as misshapen
and startling as a hobbit’s – I’d still want to be dead by 2045
at the very latest. Because I just don’t think I can handle
that much more change. I lose patience with my 96-year-old
father sometimes, with his crabbiness and refusal to just get
with it for God’s sake. Then I remember that when he was
young, you could still run into a Civil War veteran. There
were horses on the streets, and things worth having that
could be bought with a nickel.
I sound as old as he does when I tell my niece that we
only had one phone in our house, and that it was attached
to the wall; when I say that our teachers were allowed to hit
us, then send us home to our parents, who would take it a
step further and beat us until we bled.
One change I cannot bear, and which has really gotten
out of hand this past decade, is the rise of e-commerce. Or,
more specifically, its effect on bricks-and-mortar stores,
which are rapidly disappearing. If I can’t shop, and I mean
really shop – like, walk into an actual place and come out
20 minutes later with a bag under my arm, hating myself
for buying something I know I’ll never wear outside the
house – I don’t know who I am.
I watch as storefronts in towns and cities get plastered
over with For Lease signs, and my heart sinks – even if
it’s a place I disagreed with, a chain selling knock-off
designer-wear made by children standing in mud.
Hell, the closing of a Nazi supply store would bother me
at this point. “Oh, no. Not them, too!” I’d cry, peering
through the window at the shambles within. (Don’t all
empty stores look like the owners were forced to evacuate
with only five minutes’ notice?)
Aside from the vacant shopfronts, I worry about the
salesclerks and cashiers. Don’t we owe them something? At
the supermarket I go to in West Sussex, they’ve recentlyMUST
EVERYTHING
GO?
David Sedaris, humorist and
shopaholic, laments the decline
of bricks-and-mortar stores.
Illustration by Laura Gulshaniinstalled a number of those self-checkout tills. I look at the
people using them and think, honestly? As long as there are
still a few humans behind the registers – and really nice ones
we’ve all known for years – why would you use a machine?
Sarah with the new husband, Corrine who’s terrified of
bees... how can you wilfully put these people out of work?
I asked a woman ahead of me in line a few months back
why she was choosing the human instead of the self-checks,
and she said, “Oh, the queues there are too long.”
“So if they were shorter you’d use them?”
She nodded yes, yet I noticed how chatty she was with
the cashier. “Hi, Wilfred. How are you keeping?” Does she
not connect the machines to the future of the person she’s
talking to?
Another problem with self-checkouts is that they’re silent.
I like passing time with cashiers, always have, and I hold
those customers who undergo a transaction while talking
on their phones in very low regard.
“Are you kidding?” said a friend, when I chided him for
looking at Facebook while his groceries were being rung up.
“My phone is my shield – it saves me from having to make
small talk, which I hate.”
“I don’t like it either,” I told him. “But it doesn’t have to
be that way. No one’s forcing you to bring up the weather.
Take a real interest. Use some imagination.” “Has anyone
ever vomited on your conveyer belt?” I’ll often ask. That
always works in the UK, but there are a thousand decent
questions. “Do you have any friends in
wheelchairs?” “Have you ever had your
pupils dilated?” “Should we believe what
they say about _____ giving us cancer?”
This last is ever-changing, as every day brings
some new study – fir trees, support animals,
peppermint soap – just read the paper.
I’ve been told that as the self-checkout
machines take over, the cashiers will be
reassigned to stock work, which I don’t
believe for one minute. Half these people
are my age and wear slip-on shoes for the
exact same reason that I do – they can’t
bend over without crying. So how are they
going to stack heavy bags of cat litter on
a bottom shelf?
I’ve seen the self-check machines in US
drugstores and supermarkets, in Canada
and throughout Europe. Strangely, though,
I’ve never seen one in Japan. People tend to
think of that country as super-modern, but
it’s the only place I regularly visit that doesn’t
have shuttered storefronts. While American
businesses are beholden only to their
stockholders, Japanese ones still seem to care
about their workers. Walk into a coffee shop
in Tokyo or Osaka and there are always eight
employees behind the counter, six seemingly
hired just to shriek “Welcome!” as you come
through the door. Every business seems over-
staffed there, all except a store I’ve been going
to for years, where everything on sale is
shaped like a mushroom. There, they manage
with just one clerk, who I’m guessing is also
the owner. She brightens every time my
sister and I walk in, perhaps because we’re
the only customers she’s ever had.
In the West, though, it’s survival of the
fittest. The stores that have managed to12-19-FOB-Viewpoint-DavidSedaris.indd 132 03/10/2019 13:05
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