January 6, 2007

One Family Friendly Checkout?

Grocery stores have been notorious for putting strange, gross, and even unnecessary things at their checkouts. Strange? The "U-scans." Apparently a lot of research has been put into people having as little face to face contact with other humans. Also I've noticed some grocery stores with TVs at their checkouts.

I find it funny and kind of sad that they think we've come to the point that we need TV as we wait in line. With that extra time of waiting, much can be done, now that I think of it. You actually have time to reflect, think, pray. So much effort to throw out media messages out there. But here's what I absolutely hate about checkout stands, and I'm not exaggerating, I am choosing the word "hate" because it almost begins to express my strong feelings. Alright, here's what I hate, all the porn.

I said it, they are pushing these sexy images (porn, by definition is not a measure of how much skin is showing but is, by definition, any media in which the purpose is for sexual arousal) on the magazine covers in front of our faces.

I hate it. Why? Well, as a man, I have a built-in desire to fight for a beautiful woman, and this stuff they are trying (and succeeding to a lot of the time) to get me to look at distorts this inward desire to the point in which it becomes selfish, because it takes away all the work and fronts just the pleasure. But the problem is, the pleasure alone does not satisfy, and so they make it worse and worse in failing attempts.

Apparently, someone in charge of what gets put at the front of these grocery store checkouts grew a brain, or just realized something, and decided to make one of the checkouts a "Family Friendly" checkout.

This checkout was the one to the left that I was in, and it seemed to have all the same elements of our checkout except without the pictures of women in thongs, etc. There was a sign, akin to the "Express Checkout" sign, that said "Family Friendly." Now, I think this is a good thing, but I hope that they don't use this as an excuse to continue to put pornographic magazine covers at the checkout as we so often see.

To be honest, what I'd like to see is instead of having one "Family Friendly" checkout, I'd rather see all the checkouts remove the porn, and if they can't do that, just put all the crap onto one checkout stand that's out of the way, so that the people who actually want to be around that stuff can be, and the rest of the people who are tired of it can stay away.

If a grocery store chain did this, it would set itself apart from the others... everyone wins.

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