The supermarket self-serve feature appears to be the latest in a growing trend to remove ourselves from anything that might require face time. But I have to admit that after I tried it the other day, I found it to be efficient, simple and somewhat of a novel experience.

Yet I'm not sure I would have boldly walked up to the self-serve station and confidently proceeded to scan, bag and pay for my groceries sans checkout clerk if it hadn't been for my daughter and her teenage fearlessness of new things. We were in a hurry and found ourselves looking at some pretty long lines, which were probably the result of fewer checkers and more self-serve counters. So I pointed to the bank of stations and asked if she wanted to give it a try. Her response was simple: " Mom, that looks really cool."

I wasn't so sure. But I figured the old cliché "two heads are better than one" would be just the ticket we needed to get us out of the market.

So there we were—at out local Albertsons on the corner of Union and Camden avenues—venturing into our first checkout-free experience.

The way it works is quite simple. You walk up to what basically looks and operates like the window of an ATM machine. You touch the screen to start the checkout process and a computer voice directs you through. The voice does get a little annoying when it thinks you've forgotten to bag something. The computer senses each time you have scanned an item and placed the item into the bag. If you remove the bag when it's full instead of starting another it seems to become confused. We also needed some help when it came to the produce. A clerk—who I think doubles as the roving adviser— explained what to touch on the screen, so we were able to input the non-scanable items, such as the vegetables, fruits and other bulk goods. The process was relatively quick, and when it came time to pay, we could still use a credit or debit card or let the machine suck up our cash. It's basically an automated conveyor line system, and the store has about eight of these newfangled contraptions. And, by the time my daughter and I were done, we could have applied for a union job.

So if I were a grocery clerk I would definitely be a little leery about this latest technological advancement in supermarket cost cutting. It's not hard to imagine the day when markets aren't much different than gas stations, where a person sits in a booth or a small office and simply monitors the customers as they check out.

Of course we'd still need stockers and people keeping tabs on the inventory, but baggers and checkers could become a thing of the past, and I'm not so sure that's a good thing.

I've known some of the checkers at my market forever. Their faces add a sense of the familiar to my day. When they went out on strike back in the days when Albertsons was Luckys—once known as Alpha Beta—many of us regulars went elsewhere in support. These are people who have known my children from the time they were infants, making them a part of my life, and I don't want to see these good, hard-working folks ultimately replaced by metal and computer chips.

But just like the gas stations and the ATM machines, the writing seems to be on the wall, as our society continues to move toward a faceless environment. But I associate grocery clerks with neighborhoods and losing them would be hard to accept. So, even if these new checkout stations are the latest trend in supermarkets, I hope those in corporate understand there's more to customer service than scanning a head of lettuce or a can of beans.

Moryt Milo is the editor of The Willow Glen Resident. She can be contacted at 400.200.1051 or mmilo@svcn.com.