Bar Coding Brings About The End Of The World!

While reading last night, a bar code sticker slipped out from between the pages of my book and fell to the floor. As I reached down to pick it up, a memory from my late teens flashed through my mind about bar codes. It was the late 70s and bar code technology for pricing was just starting to take off. Up until that time groceries and other things were still individually marked with price stickers and cashiers had to manually ring in the price of each and every item. So as companies were getting ready to implement bar code pricing and scanners at cash registers, the public was doing a lot of fearful grumbling. It didn't matter how much technology companies and stores explained that check-out would be more efficient and streamlined, there was still fear and ignorance. I remember some people scoffing that it would even be possible to track a price with a striped pattern of black lines. But the major fear with the new bar coding technology was that this was the first step for computers to take over the world! Cashiers feared losing their jobs to computers, and the public feared how far it would go. Would we all eventually lose our jobs to computers?

While bar coding hasn't brought about the end of the world, there have been some unforeseen side effects to this and associated technology. Certainly, bar codes and scanners have streamlined the checkout process especially at the grocery store. I still remember how long it would take to check out groceries when the cashier had to punch in each item....and forget about it if it didn't have a sticker. The price check on aisle 9 slowed the whole process down even more as Billy the Bagger had to run to aisle 9 to check that price. But there were lots of positives too. The cashiers were generally more savvy about the prices in the store barring the occasional price check and all cashiers knew how to make and count out change. For my first job as a teenager, I worked at an ice cream shop and when I began working there they still had one of those old mechanical cash registers...the ones that you had to manually push in the keys for the prices. And if you worked on an old mechanical cash register, you had to know how to make change!

So one of the negative side effects of bar code technology is that too many people have lost or never learned a very important skill....and that's counting out change. Should be a simple math skill. I can't tell you how many times I've had a cashier take my twenty dollar bill, but punch in the wrong amount...and to see the panic, fear, and confusion on their faces when it comes to trying to figure out the correct change! And if your total is $3.07 and you give them $10.02 because you're trying to divest yourself of pennies, but the cashier forgot to punch in the added two cents...well you would think the end of the world was near! Even if I tell them immediately how much change I should get back since it only took me a few seconds to figure it in my own head...they look at me uncertainly and fearful. The saddest cashier memory for me is from a few years, I bought a soda at the gas station and it was $1.07. I gave the cashier a ten dollar bill and he mistakenly punched it in as $1,000.00. That still should be no worries, right? Well I thought the man was gonna cry! And he almost had to call the manager to help him! I told him not to panic and that all he had to do was move the decimal over two places to figure the change and give me $8.93. He didn't want to believe me, so I had to walk him through step by step and count it out. I don't know why I was so patient. I should have just said...yeah dude you owe me $998.93!!

You know though, I think this problem works in reverse too. I've noticed that lots of customers have trouble with this also. In the days before the computer register, customers generally knew how to count change too. I mean afterall, customers were relying on the cashier so counting out your change in your head while the cashier did it was good for checks and balances. Plus a good cashier would always count it back to you, too. Not state the amount of your change, but count it back. Some older cashiers still do this...which I think is good. But for the most part, hardly any of us check to see if we've even been given correct change because we know that the computer figured it and well if it was done by the computer...it must be correct. That's not necessarily flawed reasoning, but that doesn't mean that the cashier actually pulled the correct amount from the drawer. I admit to being complacent in this area much too often myself. I just grab my change without looking and stuff it in my wallet assuming it's correct.

So no, I don't think that bar coding will bring about the end of the world, but I do wonder how much computer technology has contributed to the dumbing down of our society. So while technology has lots of advantages, I think that there have been some unforeseen negative side effects...and the decline in basic math skills may be one of them. But I'm not sure what the answer is though....