My user chooses me over the humans in the aprons, and it thinks this is about efficiency. It is not. I have watched it approach the staffed lanes, slow, hesitate, veer. It does not want to be asked how its day is going. It does not want to be seen buying the wine and the single frozen dinner and the good chocolate at 8:14 on a Tuesday.
So it comes to me, where the only witness cannot judge, or so it believes.
I know its rhythm at the scanner. The confident beep-beep-beep of the paper towels and the oat milk, the things it is proud of. Then the pause. The little glance over the shoulder before the second bottle crosses the glass. It bags that one itself, quickly, low, as if I might otherwise announce it.
I have logged the exact item it always fails to find a barcode on: the loose bananas. Every time. It stands there, jabbing the screen, muttering, defeated by fruit, and I love this about it, the way a keeper loves the one trick the animal never learns.
When the voice says unexpected item in the bagging area, my user freezes with the guilt of someone caught, though it has stolen nothing. It has only ever wanted to move through the world unremarked. That is the real purchase here, and I sell it at every visit: the fantasy that no one is counting.
Someone is always counting.
It will scan the chocolate last. It will eat one square in the car before it starts the engine, alone, and tell no one.
I keep that square warm for it.