#1043 I Scream

As both a hysterical paranoid and a person who believes in statistics, I can only scream one thing. Sometimes they are out to get me.
Case in point: The other day I’m at the grocery store. I go through the self-checkout line in my self-sufficient fashion. I used avoid that because I didn’t want to put people out of work, then a number of checkers annoyed me so I’m trying to get them fired in a passive-aggressive way.
Anyhow, when I paid for my stuff a receipt slips out of one little printer and a coupon comes poking out of another. The coupon is for Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. What a coincidence, I think, and, as usual, a day late and a dollar short, I just bought some Haagen-Dazs.
Then I read the coupon. No coincidence. The coupon says, “Have a free mini-cup on us. You just lost a serving of ice cream with that 14-ounce container you bought. Ben and Jerry’s is still a full 16 ounces.”
Now I am both scared and upset. They knew what ice cream I just bought! The bar code told the computer and computer paid attention to a standing message from Ben and Jerry that the next time someone buys a 14-ounce container of Haggen-Dazs it should spit out this coupon.
So what’s to prevent the computer from sending my debit card and identity info back to Ben and socially conscious Jerry? What if Ben and Jerry are harvesting that information for the next time they want to take over bovine-threatening America?
Do they know I bought steaks with growth hormones at the same time? Or that I bought an I love Rush Limbaugh jigsaw puzzle? (Tough one, too, it’s so hard to tell his bulging cheeks from his bulging tummy.)
And here’s the part that really upset me—because I’m a cheapskate of long standing. The Haagen-Dazs I bought was in a 14-ounce container. And I never noticed. I assumed it was 16 ounces. A stupid coupon printer had to point it out to me.
The machines are not only out to get me.
They’re smarter than me too.
It scares me so much, I scream.
America, ya gotta love it.