“Electronic kiosks are the wave of the future,” the president of a software company once told me during the dot-com boom. “Nobody wants to talk to some flunkie who doesn’t know what’s going on when they can use a computer that’s always right. It won’t be long before you’ll even be able to check out your groceries yourself. No cashier or anything—just a scanner and a kiosk.”

His company went out of business.

Nevertheless, he was right about the supermarket. Kiosks are here to stay, but whether they’re an improvement over your average high-school dropout remains an open question. It’s a good thing you’ve got me to tackle the important issues that really matter:

Knows the PLU for organic kumquats. Okay, it’s a bit of a stretch that anyone’s going to know the product code for organic kumquats, but any checkout clerk who knows the alphabet can look it up in under a minute. On the other hand, the machine will first ask you, “Is there a sticker on it? [Yes] [No],” “What kind of food is it? [Fruit] [Vegetable] [Grain] [Cat Food]” “What kind of fruit is it? [Citrus] [Berry] [Melon] [Something else entirely]” before telling you “Please ask for assistance” and crashing. Advantage: Clerk.

Dispenses suckers to ill-behaved children. Sure is difficult to carry on like a fool and annoy staff and shoppers when you’ve got a lime-flavored sugar stick crammed in your pie-hole, ain’t it, Jimmy? On the other hand, should we really be rewarding this behavior? Tie.

Harbors deep-seated loathing for management. Let’s suppose we live in one of those dystopic futuristic societies in which computers revile their creators and groceries are checked out by robots. (We’re halfway there, okay?) Even then, the checkout kiosk is not going to hold up the line telling you about how it was supposed to have the day off to go camping with its boyfriend. Advantage: Kiosk.

Has half an ounce of common sense. The checkout kiosk double-checks the items you’ve scanned by weighing your groceries as you purchase them. If you place an item directly back in the cart or remove your bags from the scale, lights start flashing and the Grocery Police show up. Imagine, if you will, having two weeks’ worth of groceries piled on the counter when you scan a packet of geranium seeds. Do you think a scale, piled to the ceiling with 150 pounds of groceries, is accurate enough to measure a 1/16-ounce packet of flower seeds? Advantage: Clerk.

Forget Kasparov—I’ll be impressed when IBM can come up with a machine that can beat your average, minimum-wage grocery store checkout clerk.

Dave Kleinschmidt thinks science is ruining America. Oddly enough, he can be emailed at webmaster@artvoice.com.