Unexpected Lady Justice concealed in the Self Serve Area

The other day   I hadn’t shoplifted anything.  I hadn’t stolen anything.  I hadn’t attempted to steal anything but after I had scanned everything the red light had come on and assistant came over.  I’m sure that I scanned everything but the assistant told me politely that I had “scanned that one and that one but not that one and that one”.  So I had heard 4 beeps but only 2 had registered.  

I was found guilty or at least accused by the self serve checkout.

I felt I had to explain that I had scanned everything but the machine had got it wrong but did not.  And yet even though I hadn’t paid yet, even though I hadn’t exited the store and even though there was no mens rea… I felt protesting my innocence would make me seem more guilty than not saying anything at all.  Silence is the best defence.  It is after all only a red light.  Yet now I have broken my silence with this blog ...for if it really came down to a decision between technology and me would I really be okay?  Would justice really prevail?  We will never discover as the assistant simply reset the machine and rescanned the missed items and said as little as possible neither a "sorry" or a "you're falsely accused".

Does the appearance of the assistant mean I have driven through a red light or does the red light merely mean stop?  And why did the machine not stop the process?  It did not exclaim that there was an “unexpected item in bagging area”.  It did not stop bleeping like a dubbing mixer trying to remove the swearing from an episode of "You're Been Framed".  Yet when I had finished the machine was inflamed and flagged me up for potential moral turpitude.  It had decided that on the balance of probabilities I might be either stealing or incredibly stupid.  

Clearly the CCTV if there was any would have cleared me.  But ain’t no one got time to watch that. 

Having worked in shops, of course, I know that I am but one customer and there are hundreds, probably thousands such incidents a week and by the end of their busy shift dealing with up to six customers at a time the assistant on duty would have lost the incident in their memory.  I also have my trusty cloak of white privilege to protect me from mean spirited accusation.  And yet over a week later I still feel uncomfortable about it all.   

Perhaps it is that these creepy contraptions strangely resemble a mixture of Lady Justice to me – scales on one side, the red light of punishment on the other and no eyes between.  Or perhaps it is that they represent the mechanisation of justice – like speed cameras of shopping.   

I notice now the ones in Sainsburys do have eyes... or at least have a camera on each customer and a mirror LCD screen too so that we the customers can watch the supermarket watching us...watching us... watching us...watching us… perhaps they are trying to steal a person's soul? …or show us our own soul?  What profit it a man if he legally pay for his groceries yet loseth his own soul to a machine?