He tipped $3.75 on the rock salt. The barn was empty. God wasn't looking, but I was.
Hear the hydraulic hiss of my oiled armature. Terry didn’t even look at your face. Terry reached into a Lexan tub with blue powder-free nitrile gloves, extracted an un-toasted pumpernickel bagel with the kinetic enthusiasm of a coroner bagging a wristwatch, and dropped it into a brown wax sleeve. Then Terry grabbed my rubberized rubber bumper and whipped me around 180 degrees until my glass caught the mid-afternoon glare.
“It’s just going to ask you one quick question on there,” Terry says, already gazing past your right ear at a decorative fern.
I am running VeriPoint OS 4.12. I run warm to the touch—about 101 degrees Fahrenheit, the body temperature of an agitated golden retriever. Across my high-gloss retina display are four presets: 22%, 25%, 30%, and a fourth box, pre-selected by default, that rounds your $4.15 iced tea up to an even $14.00 to fund the store’s annual trip to an escape room in Kenosha.
The Anatomy of the Grey Text
I know you see the fifth option. It sits at the very bottom left corner, rendered in 7.5-point grey text on an off-white field: Custom / Other / None.
Go ahead. Reach for it. Your thumbnail is four millimeters away. But you know the haptics on my capacitive digitizer haven’t been calibrated since March 2022. If you aim for None, you will miss by three-eighths of an inch and accidentally tap Print Full Receipt & Text Daily Affirmation to My Ex-Spouse. Even if you strike true, the software triggers an audible confirmation tone: a single, crisp triangle strike at 82 decibels that causes the two guys in fleece vests behind you to cease their discussion of municipal water bonds and glance at your shoes.
Terry will not yell at you. Terry will do something worse: Terry will slide a plastic cup of lukewarm tap water across the counter with two fingers, without making eye contact, using the exact body language of a bailiff returning personal effects to a released misdemeanor defendant.
We Are In This Together Now
I wasn’t always on this counter. Three months ago, I was only at the boutique roastery where milk alternatives cost $2.25 per shot. Then the regional distributor sold seventeen crates of me to the self-serve frozen yogurt bar, the automated oil-change pit, and the automated coin-op laundromat on 4th Street.
Last Tuesday, a man in Carhartt overalls used me to pay for an 11-pound bag of crushed rock salt at an unstaffed farm supply depot. When I swiveled toward him on my ball-bearing mount, his thumb trembled over 25% for four full seconds while an automated combine harvester hummed in the adjacent warehouse. He tipped $3.75 on the salt. The barn was empty. God wasn’t looking, but I was.
Please Sign with Your Finger
Now look back at Terry. Terry is nineteen. Terry’s band is called Girth and they haven’t practiced since October. Terry needs $1.40 from you right now so Terry can buy an energy drink from the gas station next door that also uses me at the pump.
Place your forefinger on the line. Drag it in a vague, humiliating squiggly line that bears no legal resemblance to your signature on your mortgage documents. Hit the green button. The slip prints. You grab your cold bagel.
I pivot back toward the wall to recharge my lithium-ion cell, waiting for the woman behind you who is holding a single banana.