If you’ve ever been stuck behind a slow poke in a shop, or worse, an oblivious chatterbox, you will be delighted to hear about a study that says supermarkets should set up special slow checkout lanes – albeit for older people. Of course, rather than benefitting the impatient shopper desperately trying to pay for a single banana, researchers from the University of Hertfordshire say that slowing down the process of food shopping would benefit those living in social isolation, as they could have a nice chat to shop assistants (I’m paraphrasing).
Naturally, I am assuming you’re as misanthropic and intolerant as me, and that your idea of a successful social interaction at a supermarket entails shouting expletives at the self-service checkout. But there is every possibility that you are delighted to hear about this research for the opposite reason. You love making small talk with strangers; spending an hour buying a packet of biscuits is your idea of heaven; you can’t wait to shuffle off to the shops to ask that nice girl at the greengrocers how her psychology degree is going.
After all, it’s common sense that leaving the house and chatting to actual people is beneficial if you’re lonely. The findings come as part of a report looking at older people and food provision, which also recommends “shopping buddy” schemes.
But whether you’re Sid Speedy or Deirdre Dawdler, the research raises several points. On one hand, why stop at older people? There are plenty of people at risk of social isolation. Home workers, for one, or stay-at-home parents. Then there’s the bereaved, single householders and the plain old lonely. And what if you’re just feeling unhurried or particularly chatty? Perhaps you’ve had too much coffee. Maybe the cat is ignoring you. Slow checkout lanes could be the answer. After all, no matter how busy we are, sometimes we need to slow down. Harassed and harried might be the default pace for modern life, but it doesn’t add to healthy and happy.
There are of course, some practicalities. Do supermarket checkout employees really want to make small talk with customers? Should they be given conversational cues (“Great choice of loo roll, Sandra! The quilting really makes the difference, don’t you think?”) or even better, special training? When it comes to the latter, the Dutch – as they so often are – are one step ahead of us. As part of a recent community care initiative, cashiers at two supermarkets in The Hague have been trained to look out for signs of loneliness, forgetfulness and self-neglect among older shoppers, guiding them to in-store health volunteers if necessary.
In an ideal world, older people, the lonely, the friendless and the freelance – anyone in need of a friendly chat and some attention – would be catered for without the need for special training or slower checkout lanes. But then again, dream on. Segregation, we may have to accept, is increasingly the way forward.
And if we’re going down that route, let’s not stop at supermarket checkout lanes. The idea has already been floated for pedestrians – there was much fanfare about slow and fast lanes at a shopping centre in Liverpool last year.
If you can’t wait for this to become a reality, there’s a simple solution for you. Move out of the city. When I moved from London’s Hackney to a small seaside town three years ago I made two major discoveries: Firstly, people who don’t know you will talk to you, and secondly, aforesaid people have nothing but time on their hands. Here, every lane is a slow lane. I was buying bacon last week when I learned a great deal about the butcher’s upcoming wedding, and the last time I went to the haberdashery to buy some buttons I inadvertently overheard a long monologue about a fellow shopper’s childhood, education and thoughts on modern zip construction.
If all that sounds good to you, then welcome to life in the slow lane.
