It’s a shame people don’t pay with money anymore. All of the tapping, sliding and electro-zapping instead of exchanging cash and change has robbed me of a cherished fantasy in the express lane.  

Just one time I would like to see someone pay for $67.34 worth of groceries with a hundred-dollar bill and have the cashier hand $15.21 back.  

“Hey, this is not right!” the customer would protest. “I should get thirty-two dollars and sixty-six cents in change!”  

The clerk would comically mimic shock and say, “you mean you can subtract sixty-seven point three four from one hundred, BUT YOU CAN’T COUNT PAST TEN TO SEE YOU HAVE TOO MANY ITEMS FOR THE EXPRESS LANE?” 

This will never happen because any cashiers who had the gumption to do it would never scan another bar code. They would be stocking shelves at midnight, retrieving carts and listening for “CLEAN-UP ON AISLE SEVEN” announcements for the rest of their careers – maybe all the way to their high-school graduations.  

Such a high value is put on worthless customers that those who are minding the store are forced to be so polite that all sorts of discourtesy goes unchallenged. 

Seriously, haven’t you wished that at least once a checker would reach out and slap a cell phone off the side of somebody’s head and tell them to pay attention to what’s going on right in front of them? That would be very satisfying for the checker but not a good career move.  

The people who own the stores want business more than they want common decency, so we can’t count on them to monitor behavior. What we need are independent Supermarket Cops.  

One of those little electric shopping wagons could be outfitted with blue lights and officers could cruise the aisles looking for moving violations – or more accurately, those who are impeding the movement of the rest of us.  

Warnings would go to those who park a cart on one half of an aisle and squat for long periods on the other half, blocking traffic while they read the labels on cans. Like it matters which kind of beans you get. Same for people who pull a cart up next to a cart going the other direction and both stop to ponder the fine print on packages of stuff they have no intention of buying; failure to yield to crossing traffic at the end of aisles; walking backward; general inattention due to cell phone hypnosis. 

More serious warnings would go to those who engage in Shelf-Destructive Activities. Leaving egg cartons open after checking for breakage; rooting around the back row of milk looking for the latest expiration date and leaving the containers all out of order; mixing up the market ground beef with the ground round, and such.  

Most serious warnings would be for crimes against produce, including comingling the red and green grapes, putting Honey Crisp apples in the Cosmic Crisp pile, and, worst of all, tomato fondling. 

Tickets and expulsion from the premises would be reserved for certain serious offenses, such as dressing in a manner that is liable to ruin the appetite of people who are shopping for food, waiting until the order is rung up before beginning to look for a wallet in a giant purse, allowing children to run wild, and miscellaneous rudeness.  

And for those who have some kind of electronic ear-implants hooked up to their phones so they can walk around carrying on loud and intrusive conversations with the air, generally being boorish, self-important dipwads… 

Well, I hear that in some parts of the world they’ve had good results with caning.