POOCH SAYS

      I really don't enjoy interacting with machines that ask me questions and tell me what to do. The height of irritation occurs when some phone machine says, "I do not understand. Please rephrase." Ah, well, I have a larger vocabulary than a silly answering gizmo at some company too cheap to hire a phone operator. Obviously, my choice of words is too obtuse even when I speak v e r y    s l o w l y to that substitute for a human being. I must admit, though, that I prefer conversing with an automaton rather than with someone speaking Hindi.

      A good doctor takes one's blood pressure in both arms, but try explaining that to the free blood pressure machine at the corner pharmacy! There's no way to make that infernal machine use your right arm unless you are a contortionist!

      Moving on, let me tell you about those ingenious automatic cashiers at the super market. Talk about being antagonistic towards me!

      I dashed to my Kroger store the other day to get a loaf of bread and a box of Benadryl. Since it was 10%- off-your-bill if you were a senior citizen day and lines were long, I decided to use a Check Yourself Out machine.

      How many things can go wrong with just two items Besides, I'd used one of those mechanical cashiers before so I knew I'd succeed.

      I pushed 'START' and I was on my way. The machine told me to scan my Kroger card. I did. "Scan your card." So I scanned again. "Scan your card." Obviously, I was supposed to scan left to right instead of right to left, so that's what I did. "Scan your card." Perhaps run the card over that magic UPC place from the top down "Scan your card." (Thankfully this was printed on the monitor so the whole store didn't know what I was doing wrong.)

      By this time I was getting strange looks from people. Did they think I'd escaped from a loony bin I felt my face turning red from embarrassment.

      Yes, I did finally succeed when I quit scanning my Ace Hardware card! DUH !

      Well, they both have red on them!