Attribution: Phillip Pessar, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports the keeper attempting to draft behavior standards for the elderly who get caught in a tech trap, and for those who would assist them.
Using the example of the keeper making the fatal mistake of thinking he could handle the recently revised automatic checkout at Aldis without Phyllis’s help, the following ensued:
Neighboring customer says to check out items first and THEN try to pay.
Okay.
Next the keeper’s credit card gets into a dispute with the checkout device and an impasse results that goes beyond embarrassing to despair.
An old man on the verge of tears–audible sobbing may speed this up, will eventually draw enough attention for a store employee to respond with deft moves of the keeper’s credit card and the suggestion that the keeper “have a good rest of your day!”
It was all too obvious that the Aldis employee was concerned that closing time might find the keeper still standing in the auto check out line waving his credit card and whimpering. That was also the keeper’s concern.
It you see a tech illiterate like the keeper in over his head, be kind, like the fellow shopper who said with a smile to check out the items first and then pay.
Phyllis will be accompanying the keeper on all future shopping trips. She may have him on a leash and he will likely be wearing a mask…
