I Let a Self-Checkout Machine Gaslight Me for Six Months and Now I Live in a Storage Unit

I used to be a normal person. I had an apartment. I had a girlfriend named Lisa. I owned a vegetable peeler and knew where it was. Then, on a Tuesday in January, I tried to buy a single banana at a Kroger self-checkout, and a machine with the voice of a disappointed kindergarten teacher told me there was an UNEXPECTED ITEM IN THE BAGGING AREA. There was no unexpected item. The banana was right there. I was holding it. The machine could see me holding it. We were in a standoff, me and this kiosk, and I lost. I have lost every single day since.

Phase One: The Banana Incident (Day 1)

Here is what happened. I scanned the banana. The machine beeped. I placed the banana in the bagging area. The machine said — and I will never forget these words, they are burned into my brain like a bad karaoke lyric — "Please wait. Help is on the way."

Help. Is on. The way. For a banana. A single, yellow, unambiguously scannable banana. The machine summoned a sixteen-year-old named Brayden who walked over, stared at the screen for four seconds, swiped his employee badge, and said "yeah sometimes it does that." He did not fix anything. He did not explain anything. He swiped a card and the machine forgave me. I had been absolved by a child with a plastic rectangle.

I should have walked away. I should have gone to a different grocery store. I should have moved to a different state. Instead, I became curious. What, exactly, was the machine's definition of "unexpected"? What did it expect? What did it want from me?

Phase Two: The Scientific Method (Days 2-45)

I began documenting. I bought the same banana, from the same Kroger, at the same self-checkout kiosk — Kiosk 4, the one by the Red Bull display — every day for two weeks. Some days it worked. Some days it didn't. There was no pattern. I created a spreadsheet. I tracked humidity, time of day, which cashier was on duty, the phase of the moon. Nothing correlated. The machine was not following rules. The machine was following vibes.

I escalated. I bought increasingly absurd items to see what triggered the alert. A single grape. Fine. A bag of grapes. Fine. A bag of grapes with one grape removed and placed next to the bag. UNEXPECTED ITEM. A can of soup. Fine. Two cans of soup stacked on top of each other. UNEXPECTED ITEM. A loaf of bread placed vertically. UNEXPECTED ITEM. A loaf of bread placed horizontally. Fine. The machine had opinions about bread orientation. I was not shopping anymore. I was conducting field research on a hostile artificial intelligence that lived inside a kiosk at a midwestern grocery chain.

Lisa left me somewhere around Day 30. She said I had "a problem." She said I had spent $847 on groceries I didn't need "just to antagonize a computer." She said I had started referring to Kiosk 4 as "she" and "the defendant." She was not wrong about any of this.

Phase Three: The Confrontation (Days 46-90)

I decided to reason with the machine directly. I brought a notebook and wrote down every error message verbatim. Here are the greatest hits:

"Unexpected item in bagging area." (The item was a bag. The bagging area is for bags. I was being punished for using the system correctly.)

"Please place item in bagging area." (The item was already in the bagging area. I pointed at it. The machine does not have eyes that care about pointing.)

"Please remove item from bagging area." (I removed it. The machine then said: "Please place item in bagging area." I placed it back. The machine said: "Unexpected item in bagging area." We did this seven times. Brayden was summoned again. Brayden looked tired. Brayden and I now had a relationship.)

I started bringing offerings. I placed a single Dorito on the scale before scanning anything, as a tribute. The machine accepted the Dorito. It did not complain. I did this for three consecutive visits and had zero errors. I had discovered a ritual. I told the store manager about my discovery. He asked me to leave. I told him the machine and I had an understanding. He asked me to leave faster.

Phase Four: The Storage Unit (Present Day)

I no longer have an apartment. I live in a 10x15 storage unit off Route 23. It has a cot, a hot plate, and a framed photo of Kiosk 4 that I took on my last visit before the restraining order. I communicate with the outside world through a guy named Dale who rents the unit next to mine. Dale brings me groceries. I do not ask where he gets them. I do not ask if they were scanned. Some questions are too dangerous.

I have achieved a kind of peace. The machine won. I accept this. I am not angry. I am beyond angry, into a zen-like state where I understand that the self-checkout kiosk was never a convenience — it was a test. A test of patience, of sanity, of whether you will simply put the goddamn banana in the bagging area and wait for Brayden to absolve you, or whether you will let it consume your entire life. I failed the test. I am free.

If you see me at Kroger, do not approach. I will be the man standing perfectly still in front of Kiosk 4, holding a single banana, waiting for help that is, allegedly, on the way.