8th May

My local Waitrose has recently installed self-service checkouts. It's the sort of thing that constitutes news in a town such as mine. They are approximately a decade behind the curve at this point. But then Waitrose have never been ones to follow the herd, with their exobitant prices and willingness to describe profiteroles as an "Essential item". In addition to the whole "giving their employees a say and taking bank holidays off" thing.

They perhaps could have done this a while ago to ease congestion during busy periods, but fair play to them. My friend Tom works for Sainsburys and has often spoken despairingly of his customers' entitlement regarding contactless payments, affronted that they were asked to spare eight seconds to enter a PIN and employ a basic security measure until last year when the company finally introduced them. I'm uncertain what point I'm trying to make here. In any event, self-checkouts are a dangerous business for those of us who used to rely on the shame factor to curb our spending on a plethora of unhealthy foodstuffs.

Portly people like me used to live in the benefit of the doubt. We'd take a tub of Ben and Jerrys to the cashier and we could kid them and ourselves that that tub would be polished off in four or five sittings or with the assistance of other people. Rather than five minutes after I'd got through the door as part of a cookie dough fuelled comfort eating binge. These days we can go to town in the knowledge that the robots won't judge.