The Celery Lady tries to be a better human

Celery Lady, as imagined by ChatGPT

By Rebecca Stoltzfus, president for “President’s Blog: Distinctively Goshen”

I have a very difficult time with automatic checkout technologies. Once, when buying a few groceries, this boiled over. First, one of my items would not scan. After waiting for the young staff person to come over, he explained to me that my item was missing the appropriate tag. I looked at him, expecting him to get me a replacement item or enter the code directly. He did not, so I set the item aside. A few items later, I tried to scan my celery, but it too was missing an item number. I mistakenly moved the celery onto the bagging platform, which froze the computer. The young man returned. He unlocked the scanner and explained that the celery was also missing the product code. I cast a scornful gaze across the decades of our age difference and handed him the celery. I scanned my last few items and left in a huff with my groceries.

As I walked toward my car, I heard a now-familiar voice yelling to the whole parking lot: “Celery Lady! Celery Lady! You forgot to pay your bill!” Laughing out loud, I returned to pay my bill, feeling embarrassment tinged with an unrighteous dose of “whatever!”

Why would I, a rather decent human being most of the time, lose all empathy and abandon my civic values over celery that won’t scan? Because scanners (which I am admittedly bad at using) make me feel invisible and incompetent — inhuman.

Since then, my main strategy is to avoid automatic checkout lanes. I cherish the experience of being served by a real human being. Sometimes, I want to eat out not because the food is better, but simply because I want to sit down and be served. I want to feel human.

Recently I was delayed for four hours in O’Hare airport. The concourse was crowded with anxious passengers as we boarded, waited, deplaned, waited, were told to board, and then — “Sorry, our mistake!” — told again to wait. I went to buy snacks at Hudson News, and found it crammed with people because all three of their scanners were jammed.

I decided to experiment with being extra human in positive ways. I took a deep breath and was calm, smiling at the jockeying customers and the single human clerk yelling at the crowd to form a line. I beamed admiration toward parents of young children, and attempted to comfort an elderly woman alone in a wheelchair who was anxious and didn’t speak English. I took time to admire and hear the story of a little girl’s “snackle box” — a toy fishing tackle box in which every compartment was filled with a different snack.

Two young siblings at our gate were exclaiming over a robotic wheelchair that replaced human operators. “Look, how cool!” Yes, that is cool, but what if it malfunctions and an anxious elder has no human to comfort her?

We are in a big social experiment with technological replacements for real human service. I waver on the emotional knife edge, and sometimes I add to the inhumanity. But I realize that there is another choice. What if each time I encounter technology replacing human customer service, I would choose to create a new and positive interaction with someone?

My word for the year is human, and I am writing this to myself as much as to you. To be human is to recognize that our embodied physical presence matters. We affect each other physically — in restaurants, grocery stores and airports. Our presence matters. Humans feel one another, emotionally and bodily. In a world that has become increasingly transactional, how might I attend to each human interaction with greater intention and kindness?