The other day, I went to our nearby Costco to buy our weekly groceries and indulge in some free samples and chit chat with the sample ladies (and gents!). As I made my way to the checkout, I noticed something was different. Normally, the first thing you see when you approach the checkout area are self-checkout machines. But on this day, something was off. I took a minute to re-orient myself. The self-checkout machines were nowhere in sight.
For reasons that I cannot ascertain, Costco management moved the self-checkout machines to the far corner of the checkout area. Now, when you reached the checkout area, you saw cash registers (wo)manned by real humans instead of machines.
To be honest, in the several years that I have been coming to this Costco, I have never used a cash register operated by a human, always opting for the machine option. It was the proximity of the self-checkout machines, sure. They were the first things you saw in the checkout area. But also, there was likely an unconscious bias to avoid the human and favor the machine.
Humans are messy. Humans are prickly. Humans are vulnerable. Humans are variable, diverse, erratic.
Humans are inefficient. Human contact is inefficient.
Unlike with a machine, you’re never quite sure what’s going to come of an interaction with another human. In interfacing with another human, you are making yourself inherently vulnerable. There could be miscommunication, indifference, pure chaos!
That day at the Costco checkout, I paid for my groceries at a human-powered cash register and received the tiny oxytocin boost that comes from a random interaction with strangers, the kind that
is always raving about, those small insignificant moments of connection that add to the richness of life.I asked an employee about the change in layout and received a vague answer. I’d like to believe that they made the change to encourage human connection amongst their employees and customers, but I can’t say for sure.
This interaction made me realize that much of what I explore in this newsletter is about embracing inefficiencies—making phone calls instead of texting, planning your route ahead of time instead of relying on a GPS, waiting to check your email from a desktop instead of on-the-go, letting people know that you can’t always be instantly available across various communication platforms.
We live in a world obsessed with optimization. An era of contactless everything. This holiday season, lean into the inefficiencies. Make eye contact with strangers. Take your AirPods out of your ears and make small talk with the cashier instead of scanning your own groceries. Chat with the kind humans handing out samples at Costco. Choose human connection, however uncomfortable that may be. You might be pleasantly surprised.