As I wheel my cart up to check out at the grocery store, there’s only one cashier open, and there are two people already in line. A few of the eight self-checkout registers are in use, but there are some available. I walk past them and take my place in the cashier’s lane – it’s Zack, a teenager whose badge says he’s been working here “1 year.” I wait for Zack because I want that human presence, to feel I’m part of a community of people connected to and responsible for each other.

One time while standing in line, I heard the cashier, an older woman, talking to the customer ahead of me, describing how she needed to work because her landlord had just raised her yearly rent by $1,800, and her Social Security wasn’t enough to cover it. Her daughter had offered to help make up the difference, but this woman was independent and wanted to pay her rent herself. That cashier lives in my town and earns the money she needs by working here. Who else do I usually see working at the registers? Teenagers like Zack, who need a way to earn money near where they live and gain a work ethic before they start a career. Moms who need a job with hours that let them be home when their children get back from school, or older people, looking to get out of the house or earn those few extra bucks. Is it worth putting these people out of work, giving them fewer options for jobs near their homes (when they may or may not have a car and there is no public transportation), so I can save a few minutes using the self-checkout?

Saving time. We all try to do it. We organize our workload to finish things faster. We plan out the most efficient route to do our errands. Many times, there is no downside, but sometimes there are consequences that aren’t considered. In his book The Unsettling of America, author and environmentalist Wendell Berry writes about dairy workers and efficient milk production, but if you substitute cashiers and groceries the overarching idea is the same: Are we truly measuring the cost of saving money or time?

Did these dairymen have any value not subsumed under the heading of “efficiency”? … If we use technology that allows “efficient” producers to lower the cost of milk to consumers, do we then have a formula by which to determine how many consumer dollars are equal to the livelihood of one dairyman? Or is any degree of “efficiency” worth any cost?

How much time do we save going through the self-checkout lane? Do I scan faster than the cashier? Get help more quickly if I need it? Maybe I save five to ten minutes if I don’t have to wait in a line. But how do I weigh my ten minutes against a person’s livelihood, which, with each visit to the self-checkout, becomes less necessary, until the job is eliminated entirely?

I know there are arguments on both sides. For companies, fewer employees might mean lower prices for the store’s customers and more profitability, even with the increased errors and shoplifting that can occur with self-checkout. I spoke to the manager of a local grocery store that has both self-service and traditional lanes. He told me about the unfortunate need to have fewer cashiers due to mandated increases in minimum wages, the difficulty in finding and keeping employees even with higher pay, and the trend toward online shopping. This trend, he thought, might lead to a time when there are no stores for customers at all, only warehouses where online orders are fulfilled and either picked up or delivered.

But in his speech “Health Is Membership,” Berry sums up how he makes the choice: “I am not ‘against technology’ so much as I am for community. When the choice is between the health of a community and technological innovation, I choose the health of the community.” In the case of self-checkout, technological innovation means time and money saved. At the grocery store, we have a chance to look at our own time in a way that values a human being and a connected community as well as a dollar amount, and to send that message to the store with our actions.

In choosing the checkout counter with a human being, I also choose connection. Several years ago, one of my town’s state representatives, Phyllis, worked at the deli counter at the grocery store (where there were also prepackaged meats for self-service). Each time I was able, I had her fill my order for cracked black pepper turkey. “Look, kids, there’s Phyllis, she’s our state rep,” I’d say, pointing her out. When I’d step into the election booth to vote, there was Phyllis’s name, and I felt as though something greater bound us together, and that was community (and turkey).

In his book The Second Mountain, author and cultural commentator David Brooks quotes study after study that shows there is a loneliness crisis in the United States. He believes this growing sense of alienation and the increased rates of depression are largely caused by what he calls our current “I’m Free to Be Myself” culture. As he puts it, in the first half of life we tend to be more focused on ourselves: our own advancement, our own success and happiness. But then we reach the top of that mountain and find it unfulfilling and lonely, and we realize there’s a second mountain out there that includes other people. He says, “We assume that self-interest – defined as material gain and status recognition – are the main desires of life … [but] loving care is not on the fringe of society. It’s the foundation of society.” The individualist says, “Celebrate independence, but the second mountain hero says, I will celebrate interdependence. I will celebrate the change to become dependent on those I care for and for them to become dependent on me.” We move from being self-centered to other-centered. To my mind, anything that replaces a screen or a self-service option with human contact is a step toward that second mountain of connection and interdependence.

Brooks also refers to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German theologian, when he writes:

Giving is the primary relationship between one person and another, not the secondary one. It is family member to family member. Friend to friend. Colleague to colleague. People to community. It is the elemental desire to transform isolation and self-centeredness into connectedness and caring.

I would add to that list: customer to cashier.

Market Basket, a large New England supermarket chain, agrees with this. According to a 2023 report by FMI, the Food Industry Association, 96 percent of retailers surveyed offer self-checkout registers, but Market Basket has made the choice not to add them to their stores. “Connection to the community is an integral part of the ‘More for Your Dollar’ shopping experience,” a corporate statement reads. “We are not considering adding self-checkouts. It is important to our team of valued associates that they have the opportunity to provide the direct in-store experience and service that our customers deserve.” This allegiance to employees and customers was returned when thousands of customers took to the streets (and left the stores empty) in 2014 to protest the removal of the CEO responsible for this positive corporate culture; six weeks later, he was reinstated. Trader Joe’s, a nationwide grocery chain, also chooses not to have self-checkout. Vice CEO Jon Basalone says, “We believe in people, and we’re not trying to get rid of our crew members for efficiency’s sake.” The manager of the grocery store I spoke to also prefers traditional cashiers, who provide better service and can receive direct feedback on products and services, rather than complaints being sent straight to corporate headquarters or worse, posted online. In his opinion, customers and cashiers connecting makes more sense for the company, as well as the community.

In the weird way the world has of repeating messages until you hear them, I was in my synagogue recently when the visiting rabbi, Jonathan Biatch, stopped the service to ask us to do something simple. “Turn to the person on your left or right and look into his or her eyes for a minute. It might be embarrassing or awkward, but just do it – stick with it for a minute.” We all laughed nervously and did it (or didn’t). “This is why you’re here,” he continued, “and not here in the synagogue but HERE, here. To be here for each other, to see, really see, each other. You’re here for you, but even more, you’re here for the other person.” Or, as the Torah more succinctly puts it, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18).

And who is missing from the self-checkout? That’s right, that other person, your neighbor. So when I go to the store and choose the check-out aisle with the real live human, it’s my chance to act, against screens and isolation, and for people, community, and interdependence. And for myself. I want someone to say hi to, someone to talk to about what I didn’t find, someone to whom I can explain what poppyseed filling is used for on Purim. Maybe, someday, this will be the only person I talk to that day.