Tales from the first tee
Stories about my life experiences and others as I work at one of the premier golf clubs in Charleston, SC. Interviews with golfers around the world that have one thing in common...the pursuit of excellence on a golf course and everything else that happens along the way.
Tales from the first tee
Every argument has truth somewhere in the middle
The increasing polarization of our world leads us to contemplate where truth can be found amid extreme perspectives, while exploring what makes sporting greats truly exceptional.
• The evolution of "GOAT" (Greatest Of All Time) from a term of ridicule to one of admiration
• Indonesia's controversial new laws criminalizing sex outside marriage and "blasphemy"
• An encounter with "Brockmire," a golfer who epitomizes poor etiquette and emotional volatility
• How technology companies track our activities and use our data for recommendations and targeting
• The challenge of navigating self-checkout lines during busy holiday shopping seasons
• The special connection between parent and child when playing golf together
This podcast is brought to you from beautiful Charleston, South Carolina. I'll be back with more tales next year.
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Welcome to another episode from Just Tales, a monthly hybrid of fictional and non-fictional stories that compel me to rant. There'll always be a golf story or two laced into my blog because, well, it's where I spend a good amount of my recreational time. So, whether you're a golfer or not, if you're a skeptic, doubter or open-minded, this is the place for you. So kick back and listen. This is the last episode for 2022, and I'd like to express my sincere appreciation to listeners who tuned in in 60 countries and 1,051 cities worldwide. It's been another unique year, not only in the sport of golf, but around the globe. Now we're all going to be blasted with the news and review for 2022 for the next few weeks, so I won't bother to bore you with more of the same. I'll just say this the entire world, just like the golf world, has become even more divisive. Most of what we hear is from the fringes, with loud voices, despite the fact that most of us sit somewhere in the middle. So I'll just leave you with a saying that my dad used to repeat often Don't believe anything you hear and half of what you see, because the truth lies somewhere in the middle of every argument. In this holiday episode I'll share a golf story about a new character I'll call Brockmire. People in the Northeast challenging themselves to see how long they can go before they turn their heat on in their house. Big Brother is watching you. A segment on how we allow social media companies to track our every move. Indonesia bans sex outside of marriage and political or religious apostate behavior Blasphemy.
Speaker 1:But first a segment I call what Makes Great Great. There's this trend going viral about who's the goat g-o-a-t, the acronym for greatest of all time, a pop culture catch-all. But the goat didn't always have the positive connotation as it does today. The history of our sport is braying loudly with negative accusations of being the GOAT. It wasn't an acronym then, it was a condemnation. Willie Shoemaker, you know when he was probably the best jockey of all time, stands up early in the 1957 Kentucky Derby to lose it. Chris Weber's timeout and, by the way, I was there when he ended the NCAA National Championship in 1993, when he calls a timeout but he didn't have any left. Fred Merkel of the 1908 baseball New York Giants Now they're the San Francisco Giants but he fails to touch second base on a walk-off single, loses the game. Somewhere in our dim American sportscasting, a GOAT became an athlete that failed garishly, hilariously and at the worst possible time. If the GOAT still had that connotation, it would have been awarded to Jacoby Myers of the New England Patriots last week who, with seconds left in the fourth quarter in a tie ball game, decides to lateral the ball backwards. Instead of trying to deke and head fake some of the Raiders in his way to at least try and make a touchdown, he makes this horrible lateral 10 yards behind himself into the arms of Raider defenseman Chandler Jones, who straight arms the only player in his way, quarterback Mac Jones, and runs for a winning touchdown. I'll tell you, if you want to make SportsCenter's top 10 plays of the day, that, my friends, is not the way you want to draw up your 15 minutes of fame. A hundred years ago, jacoby would have been labeled the GOAT, but that wouldn't have been an acronym. But in today's day and age, the GOAT is lionized Messi of Argentina, mbappe of France and, by the way, probably the best final World Cup game I've ever seen.
Speaker 1:Michael Jordan, tom Brady, I mean, for those of you who listen to my podcast, you won't be surprised to learn that I have a problem with the phrase greatest of all time, probably for two reasons. Number one time is fluid. It doesn't start or it doesn't end. All time suggests a final period. How could somebody be the greatest of all time if time's not over yet? Better yet, the term greatest is just too amorphous for my brain. Who is the greater basketball player? Michael Jordan, kobe, lebron, steph? Who's the greatest football player? Joe Namath, joe Montana Okay, maybe Montana Tom Brady, the Manning brothers? And which of those two is greater than each other? I know this. Eli's dry wit is funnier. Having to make a claim of the greatest of all time brings me back to my childhood argument of which superhero would win in a fight. It's all speculation, and we know what happens when we speculate.
Speaker 3:As FTX grew in the industry, Bankman Freed furthered his reputation as a crypto savior. When digital asset prices collapsed earlier this year, it's not fair to customers. He bailed out firms spending about a billion dollars.
Speaker 1:It's okay to do a deal that is moderately bad in bailing out a place. But that image didn't last.
Speaker 1:I think the term GOAT is overused and illustrates how much we need heroes to praise and adore. You know, it's no different than the Greeks adoring their gods. I mean, who do you think the Greek goat was? Zeus, poseidon, aphrodite? Yeah, she gets my vote.
Speaker 1:My point is this it's comforting to live in an era where you get to witness athletes' feats of greatness. It's natural to want to admire and applaud them for their accomplishments, particularly as you want to thank them for hard work and dedication to be the best that they can be. Giving them the badge of GOAT makes us feel better for bestowing our gratitude for their accomplishments. But make no mistake about it Superman would destroy Batman with his x-ray vision and super human strength. So take that, barry Rosenfeld, my fifth grade nemesis. Look, I don't think you have to make an argument for who's the best at what they do, to support them while they're doing it. If it makes you feel better that you took your loved ones to witness greatness, it's okay that you don't label them the GOAT. If you went to Qatar and watched Messi will Argentina to victory? That experience should be sufficient to say you saw Messi do what few have ever done and that his performance was one of the greatest feats of willing a team to win that you've ever seen. I don't go to an immense amount of sporting events, but when I go I love them, and it just so happens that I personally witnessed Bo Jackson run a 91-yard touchdown against the Seattle Seahawks right when I walked into the stadium in 1987. And then, two years later, I watched him in baseball hit a 450-foot home run at the 1989 All-Star Game in Angel Stadium. So I don't know if he was the multi-sport goat, but I know this. In both instances I happened to be downing a hot dog and almost choked, the same way I did when Justin Leonard made the putt in 1999 at the Ryder Cup to seal the fate for the Americans, while I'm standing on the 17th green with a hot dog in my mouth. So I don't know, maybe hot dogs are goat food, but the point I'm trying to make is that the term goat suggests that since time began with the Big Bang or Adam and Eve, believe what you want this athlete has accomplished something that no other has done to date. What happens when someone breaks their record? Are they now the greatest of all time? And if that's the case, then what happens to the athlete who had the title of greatest of all time. What happens to all time? Well, excuse me, what? Oh, neil deGrasse Tyson just weighed in and said hey, rich time expands. Okay, I get it.
Speaker 1:Indonesia bans sex outside of marriage. You know, it's funny. Just when you think humanity is evolving to a newer, more progressive and, I hesitate to say woke because of its polarizing effect, but more enlightened perspective, I'm constantly reminded of the fact that not everybody shares that opinion. Some would suggest that the deontology of many religions are swinging the pendulum back to a more conservative, draconian era of control. I find it absurd, with our 7.6 billion people owning a smartphone with access to the rest of the world's behavior, that there isn't more pushback against this. Maybe it is the worldwide exposure that's influencing behavior that bothers some people in control because they're losing it. So why am I ranting about this? They're losing it. So why am I ranting about this?
Speaker 1:Recent lawmakers in Indonesia approves an overhaul of their criminal code that punishes people for offenses like sex outside of marriage and blasphemy, which is basically talking shit about your government. I mean, could you imagine in the United States, congress and Senate sending a bill to the president to do the same thing? I mean it would eliminate most nude services. It would put John Oliver, bill Maher, steve Colbert, hasan Minhaj and Jon Stewart back to the writer's room to come up with new material. And sex outside of marriage hey, isn't that most sex acts anyway? Certainly by volume. I mean, how do you police sex outside of marriage and who do you recruit to enforce it? Karen's meter maids or those airport security people outside at the curb barking at you to move your car? You know it's funny. When I lived in Chicago and New York, the airport curb security staff were the nastiest junkyard dogs and the most irritable service individuals I've ever experienced.
Speaker 1:Now, fast forward. I moved to Charleston and my experience at the airport took an entire 180 degree turn. The nicest, polite security force that didn't make me feel like I'd violated one of their family members was plotting to do some horrible things at the airport. Because here I am with an open trunk filled with golf clubs and smelly golf socks. They got it. You know I just hate to be that couple on vacation in Bali. You know, I just hate to be that couple on vacation in Bali to be arrested for violating Indonesian new morality laws. Really, what series of events have transpired in this democratized country to influence this overreaction? Well, I guess, when you look at the world, I guess, after Brexit in the UK and the alleged insurrection in the United States, there seems to be a move to make the world great again. But here's a newsflash listeners, I don't think that prohibiting sex outside of marriages is going to accomplish that at all. It's just going to make the world an angrier place.
Speaker 1:Brockmire, the most non-Zen golfer of all time. So I'm playing golf with Mike K. Last week and got paired up with these two senior golfers from New England. It took me almost 16 holes to realize that these guys, despite their similar accents and seeming familiarity with each other, just happened to get paired up at the first team minutes before I arrived. Now I should have caught on earlier, since one of them kept rolling his eyes every time this guy I'll call Brockmire made any statement. Now I got to give Mike K props for giving this guy, this Beantown bozo, the nickname of Brockmire. For those of you unfamiliar with the comedy series Brockmire, played by Hank Azaria, it's about this once-famed baseball sports announcer who suffers an embarrassing on-air meltdown caused by his wife's serial infidelity. After 10 long years away from announcing, he finds a small-town minor league team, the Morrisville Frackers, to announce baseball and says about everything you could think about inappropriate, misogynistic, racially infused, unwelcome comments about every subject.
Speaker 2:All right, two outs now. Bottom of the eighth, or, as I used to know it, the Jerry's Gelatin Home Run Etiquette. Let's go, brothers. Hey, fun fact, folks Gelatin is made from the bones of slaughtered cows and pigs, which are then crushed and treated with acids and chemicals until they're reduced to a fine collagen powder. Fastball just catches the inside corner 0-1. I ask you, morristown, what kind of a creature doesn't just kill its prey but then uses science to rob it of its very living essence? Stevens just misses with a breaking ball outside. Count evens 1-1. Make no mistake, there's nothing decent about human beings, folks. No objective, definable form of good, not really a soul. More like the absence of a soul, just blackness. So if you want to stare into the gaping yawn of oblivion, don't look up to the heavens, no, no, just look squarely into the mirror. Straight three, call and that'll end the eight the senior new englander fit the name.
Speaker 1:I mean it first started when I asked him if he wanted to play from the gold tees, which were approximately 500 yards shorter than the white tees, and his response and his tone was like you gotta be kidding, be kidding me, those are old mentees. I'm playing the member tees Now. Brockmire had to be this septuagenarian with an ego the size of Fenway Park. From the time we teed off until we putted out on the last hole, brockmire never shut up. Just because you have an opinion on everything doesn't mean you have to share it, unless you have a podcast and the world is your oyster.
Speaker 1:But Brockmire teed off first on every hole. He drove his cart directly to his ball without regard for anybody else's ball was to his ball without regard for anybody else's ball was. And you know some of his drives were longer than ours. So typically when you have a longer drive, you drive your cart up to where the shorter drivers are, you wait so you're not in their way, and then you drive to your ball. But that's not what Brockmire did. He would drive up to his ball.
Speaker 1:Now, of course, he didn't want to get in our way. So you know what he did. He just hit his shot. So no matter where he hit his drive, he would drive up to it and no matter where anybody else was or what they were doing, he'd go and hit his second shot. Now he gets to the green. What do you think he does? He gets to the green and, regardless of where everybody else's ball was, he immediately goes to his ball, lines up his putt and putts first, even if other guys were farther away, and then, after he putts, he talks while everybody else is putting. The best part was not how he just didn't understand the etiquette of golf. The best part is how he reacted to his bad shots, which, by the way, were on just about every hole. First of all, he yells his name out Brockmire you idiot.
Speaker 1:I understand his name's not Brockmire, but I think you get my point. I mean I don't want to use his real name. I mean I don't want to be accused of libel Toward the end of the round while he was chastising himself. I just felt, you know, I'm going to be the better man here and I go up to him and I go. You know, there's this really good book out there and I've suggested this book to others because somebody suggested it to me when I was younger. It's called Zen Golf.
Speaker 1:And he agrees he has a problem maintaining composure and containing his emotional outbursts. So I figured, okay, I figured maybe the conversation's over and the fact that I mentioned to him there's this book called Zen golf, maybe he's going to be more self-aware. Two holes later and after another outburst, after missing the short putt, I just reiterated my reading advice. But I believe that three times a charm. So the next hole, when he tees it up first and then waxes, drive into the marsh and gets disgusted with himself and yells Brockmeyer, you idiot. I just said lightly under my breath. The book might not improve your swing, but I think you're going to like yourself more and you might say hey, rich, that was a douche move, rubbing salt into the wound.
Speaker 1:But Mike K would attest to the fact that Brockmire was this unbridled, loud, selfish golfer that had very little interest in the subtleties of golf etiquette and, while being self-destructive, after every bad swing and every missed putt his negative energy was bleeding all over every other golfer that had the misfortune of teeing it up with him. They say that it's important to leave a golf course in better condition than when you first step foot on it Things like sanding your divots or fixing your ball marks. I feel the same responsibility to the entire game, which at times might include filing off the rough edges of those who bring an ax to surgery. I don't think you have to be a genius to guess that Brockmire probably didn't run out and get this book. But as I put this out into the universe, I am hoping that somebody catches up on this and knows somebody like Brockmire and goes out and buys him the book and maybe it's really going to be this guy from the Boston area.
Speaker 1:Who knows, when fall turns to winter, how long do you wait to turn the heat on? Most of us have lived with others and know that we each have our own personal thermostat. Some run hot and some run cold. I've always been told that I'm the human torch. I'm a welcome beacon in the winter and a nuclear power plant in the summer. It's rare to find two cohabitants, particularly opposite sexes, to run at the same temperature. So there's a lot of thermostat manipulation as season temperatures change. Not a riveting epiphany, right. But here's the rub. As the cost of energy skyrockets out of control, the cost to moderate your household temperatures to fit your or your roommate's comfort zone can be shocking when the bill arrives. And we all know what those conversations sound like, particularly if the designated bill payer is not the guilty party who always adjusts the thermostat to achieve total nirvana every hour. So why in God's name am I talking about this now, other than the fact that it's winter in the Northern Hemisphere and energy prices are off the charts? And energy prices are off the charts.
Speaker 1:I read this story a few days ago about a 36-year-old, brian Chevalier, living in Rhode Island, who challenges himself not to turn on the heat in his place until he could no longer stand the frigidity of the winter. Chevalier's Facebook and Twitter page have 28,000 followers that are cheering him on and sharing their own attempts to keep the heat off. I mean, could you imagine coming home from work and still wearing winter jackets, hats and gloves in the house to avoid getting hypothermia, and then going to bed and waking up in all of those clothes? But here's part of Chevalier's rules no electric blanket, no space heaters, no wood stoves or no quick turning on the heat and turning it off. When temperatures get back up into the 50s in New England he opens the windows to get this to bring in the warmer air. His followers comment on how long they could last until they flip on the heat. Some have braved it until mid-November, but eventually acquiesce and succumb to the comforts of heat. Everybody tries to beat last year's record by adding on more days without turning on the heat. Most of the people that I live around and I know have transplanted themselves to the low country in South Carolina from much colder climates, and they all have at least one thing in common they're not going to be part of Brian's brigade. Warm weather communities have been bulging at the seams when telecommuting and remote work became acceptable means of work. Now I applaud Brian and his followers for making a game out of energy conservation, particularly as I sit comfortably in less harsh of a climate and turn my thermostat up whenever there's the hint of the temperature diving below 60.
Speaker 1:Intro Music Artificial Intelligence. It knows when you are sleeping, it knows when you're awake, it knows the sights you've been on. So be smart, for goodness sakes. And that, my friends, is why you'll never see me stand up at a karaoke bar. Mental intelligence is here to stay and not going away, unless you're totally off the grid, you like most. All of us are feeding servers with our every click. Not only have we been helping build a network of computers teaching computers, we're collectively building an interactive map of our thoughts, behaviors and whereabouts.
Speaker 1:Mankind, through cave art, scriptures and architecture, has been writing a script of history. I call it, leaving breadcrumbs for future generations. That process has been a slow evolutionary process where humans teach humans, curious intellect influences invention and improvements generation by generation. Humans teaching humans has a certain speed, similar to the speed of sound or light. The only difference is the last two are noticeably unchanged. Once computers were invented and improved upon, they start to teach each other at speeds far superior to our speed of invention, and as we continue to interact with computers, what we know and what we do becomes fluid and predictable.
Speaker 1:Now don't get me wrong I am a heavy user of technology and appreciate the comforts it affords me in my lifetime. The invention and commercialization of the microwave, the smartphone, gps, google and online shopping have made my life easier, more connected and satisfies my intellectual curiosity. I no longer have to wait 20 or 30 minutes to eat a hot meal if I'm in a hurry, despite the fact that I really like cooking. Because of technology, I now have the choice to be able to do something really quickly or take my time, and when it comes to cooking, I could find everything on YouTube or TikTok. I could see people in one minute teach me how to do things that I would have had to read a cookbook for, or maybe it's passed down generation to generation. With technology, I could do things and learn things so much quicker.
Speaker 1:When I was a kid growing up, we had a piano in our house, and the only way that I could learn how to play is by having a piano teacher come to the house, and I could say this categorically I despised every piano teacher that came to our house. I just didn't like the experience. But now, with YouTube, every new piano riff that I've learned, every song, comes from one to three minute tutorials. I guess I'm an autodidact and I need to learn at my pace, and technology offers me the opportunity to go search for the things that I need. It's delivered in breakneck speed and I don't have to have a piano teacher telling me why didn't you practice last week? That's horrible, you're moving backwards. I guess that was my experience. Yeah, I didn't you practice last week. That's horrible, you're moving backwards. I guess that was my experience. Yeah, I can't get enough technology.
Speaker 1:I've got over a hundred apps on my iPhone, many of which are linked to my iMac, to allow me to see things, hear things, research things, bet on things, get to places without getting lost, buy things and control things, and even creep on social media in a legal and adult way. I am moderately certain that those conveniences come at a cost of giving up my anonymity, my whereabouts and just general interest in things. I listen to podcasts and my playlists on Spotify. They have this free service called Spotify Wrapped, where they take my listening for the previous year, package it up in different categories that I might be interested, like songs. I might have missed categories like blues rock, mellow rock and artist messages. They have developed playlists for me to commute to, to work out to, to road trip to, to relax to and sometimes to meditate to. They give me options of podcasts that I frequent and recommend other podcasts. They've done that by taking my history, compare it to millions of other users who might listen to similar things, and then recommend if they like this, then you're going to like this and you know what. I am oddly okay with the results of having my data analyzed because they're giving me solutions that might keep me as a loyal Spotify user, if this is the Trojan horse that gives my future enemies. A look into my playlists, into my habits, my 5,613 minutes of listening, which, by the way, is more than 47% of other listeners in the United States. So I must listen to music a lot, and the fact that Van Morrison, counting Crows, joe Cocker and, of course, the Grateful Dead were my top bands basically says I'm probably too old to fuck with.
Speaker 1:Hey, data collection is a serious business. If used productively, it could connect those who make things to those who are most inclined to buy those things. If abused, it can frustrate any smartphone user with excessive pop-up ads regarding something they googled or, even more sinister, something they talked about while the location of their smartphone was in air shot range. That, my friends, is creepy. Or, if used against us, can track where we go and with whom we interact with. This is why the US Senate moved to expand the ban on TikTok being downloaded on government-issued smartphones. That's approximately 2 million federal employees, and if the states follow suit, that's an additional 5 million state employees. A total of 7 million government-issued smartphones that could be housing the assumed Chinese Trojan horse. You know it's like the one you see in front of PF Chang's Trojan horse. You know it's like the one you see in front of PF Chang's. Obviously, this is a thing and a worry that something that is seemingly entertaining, educational, intoxicating could be a facade for data collection as a strategy to eventually hypnotize us into dancing and singing while the Chinese regime plots a takeover.
Speaker 1:And I'm not a government employee, but if I eventually have to forfeit TikTok to save the country, I'll do it. But what do I replace it with? Facebook Reels or now YouTube Shorts? Either way I choose, it's still feeding the AI monster that will continue to algorithm me to death. With all these things I want to see, hear and participate in, there's no going back, so proceed with caution. And why do I keep getting all these seductresses and friend requests from I'll call them millennials with zero posts and a thousand followers? I got to be honest with you. I'm not sure that they're loyalist to my podcast. I think I just better check my browser history. Have you noticed all these new novices slowing down the lines at self-checkout counters at grocery stores? Another holiday season, which means everybody comes out of the woodwork to shop. Now.
Speaker 1:I never minded the experience of walking into what we now call brick and mortar. You know the retail experience of walking into a particular store to find what you're looking for. Looking for. It became a good part of my career as I started working for companies that made household items that were sold in just about every big box store, drugstore, warehouse, club, grocery store and, at the end of my career, yeah, sex shops. Once you work in consumer products, when you walk into a store, your mind is trained to think differently. I walk into a store and I look at hey, what's on display, what's on sale, what's being cross-merchandised together and which brands are the big dogs Now? Usually their brands are in the middle or the front of the aisles and are at eye height Eye height for somebody that's five foot five. Now those brands don't magically appear in these hotspots. There are teams of data junkies from each of these brands that convince retailers how to optimize their traffic flow, sales and profits by putting their brands in these key positions. That became my special power at the tail end of my sales and marketing career. So now when I walk into like I'm walking by the yogurt section, I could see that the brand show Bonnie has basically boxed out other yogurt companies. They boxed them out, like Dennis Rodman, because their category management department must be stacked with clever insights.
Speaker 1:People, as, as a shopper, I have this one credo when I go shopping, it shouldn't take longer to check out than it does to shop. Earlier in my life, when I was, say, less patient and far less zen, out of the frustration of having to wait in a line longer than it took me to shop, I would just walk away from the checkout lines, leave my stuff in a basket and walk out of the store. Douche, move, right. I know I'm working on it. Trust me, I was probably not the only impatient shopper out there, as evidenced by all of these new self-checkout machines. I love self-checkout. I always challenge myself to be the fastest at swiping, bagging and paying. I mean, somebody has to set the flow as an example for everybody else in the line, right?
Speaker 1:But the process doesn't always go as smooth as it was designed to, as smooth as it was designed to. Number one if you buy any alcohol, the process comes to a dead halt until a clerk comes over, and that clerk has to be over 21 years old and then they have to put in their special code in the system to allow you to keep checking out. Number two if you have fruits or vegetables without a UPC code, you have to work that touch screen a couple of times to get to the right item, the right package, all of those things. And number three if there's an issue of a UPC code on a product that you're trying to scan that's scratched or just doesn't pick up again, you have to call that special person over. But barring some of those things, all of this should go much faster than if you were going to go into a manual checkout clerk. I mean, that's theoretical.
Speaker 1:I had an experience the other day that I'm still laughing about. So I spend 25 minutes grocery shopping at one of the more frequently shopped stores in Charleston. When I get to checkout there are only three manned registers that are open and the lines were queued up so deep that people were heading queued up back into that heavy traffic area aisle. So I quickly decide to head over to the self-checkout lines, which I tend to like to do anyway. Now there are at least six self-checkout registers that were occupied and there were four people waiting in line behind them. Okay, I figure six people that are working the self-checkouts would be done I don't know 10 minutes at the worst, and then the next four would replace some of those six and I'd be done no more than 15 minutes max. Seems like a long time, but it's holiday shopping and you know I'm so zen right now.
Speaker 1:It's crowded and busy, but how long can self-checkout take, right? So I'm standing there. Five minutes goes by and only one of the six people who were self-checking when I got there had left. So that means one of the four in front of me went there. Now there are three people in front of me and everybody that, the three people that are in front of me, everybody's on their phones or they've picked up one of those magazines at the checkout. You know people us things like that, and they are diligently reading that because they know it's going to take some time, and you know. So now one spot opens up, one of the ones in the front, and these three people in front of me, they're on their phones, they're reading the magazine. What do you do? Do you say, excuse me, the checkout is open up front. Mind you, we're in Charleston, south Carolina, where it's even unusual to hear somebody hunk their horn in traffic. And if they do, you can bet their license plate is from another state. I'll let you fill in the blank at whatever state shame you want to state shame. So I'm sitting there. I'm standing there waiting. Nobody says anything to the guy who's next in line until, finally, that one self-checkout helper alerts him that there's an open checkout. I mean that 30 second delay seemed like a lifetime, but hey, I'm working on myself, I'm Zen.
Speaker 1:So five of the original six are struggling using the checkout. One guy couldn't figure out what kind of squash he chose and how to get the self check at helper to point on the screen to the only picture of squash that was on the screen. Okay, you know, maybe it was his first time. One gal in her 20s couldn't find her ID to prove that she could buy this bottle of wine, so she had to wait for that checkout person over 21 to come over and validate her ID. And another person seemed to be like playing Tetris with each of her scanned items to make sure they fit perfectly in her bag after she scanned them.
Speaker 1:So now 20 minutes have gone by and there's still a few people in front of me. Finally, everyone in front of me is on the self-checkout. I am now next. 25 minutes have already come and gone, exceeding the amount of time that I was shopping, but I'm next in line and I figured that I just couldn't leave my cart at this time. I'm working on myself. How long can it take for one more person to vacate. Now I'm starting to feel like that golfer who has to comment on how slow the golfers in front of them are. Why is that guy waiting to hit? Did he just take two shots? How long is he going to line up that putt? So I kept watching these self-checkout shoppers while six people got in line behind me.
Speaker 1:Now it's a little stressful. I mean, how hard is it to scan an item, put it in your bag and pay? It's like everyone in front of me was on the remedial checkout class. Finally one of the checkout stations cleared and I made a beeline to show all the people behind me that I was respecting their time and I know how to do this. So now I pull up my first item, a vegetable. Oh shit, I have to look up the description. Is it organic or not? Fuck, the organic pick looks just like the other one. What do I touch? I don't know. And I hit the organic one, okay. Next, how many items do you want? Okay, it's two items. And so, next thing, I've got something from the deli section. Okay, I scan it, but it's not picking up the UPC because the deli counter guy while he was talking to me and we're having a great conversation wrinkled the label and it wouldn't read the UPC code.
Speaker 1:So now, like a kid who's got to go to the bathroom in class, I raised my hand to try and get the attention of that checkout help lady. She finally comes over and she says okay, I'll take it over to the deli. She gets this other young girl to stand there and kind of watch to help while she goes over to the deli. Okay. So I'm like okay, how long is this going to take? This is getting worse, right? So I go through a few more vegetables Look you, pcs, I'm trying to eat healthy these days, right?
Speaker 1:I then go to proceed to weigh a bunch more produce which requires more touch screening. Go to proceed to weigh a bunch more produce which requires more touch screening, which I now have become an expert at and finally have gotten to the bottom of my list. The last item a case of yinling beer, which of course I can't proceed with because the new checkout helper is under 21 and she's got to wait for that gal to get back from the deli. So I look back at the line and there are six people looking at me Not all of them are on their phones and it looks like they're giving me the stink eye. I mean, that's the same look I gave the remedial shoppers in front of me. Now I'm a remedial shopper. The checkout assistant gets back with the deli items, puts a special coat in for my beer and I'm done. And I really I wanted to explain to everybody behind me that I'm not the problem, but who cares? It made me very aware that everybody's got to deal with the same stuff.
Speaker 1:It's a system that's still improving. I mean, doesn't the current system of shopping seem odd to you? You find things that you want to buy, you place them in a cart, you take that cart to the scanning center, you take the items out of the cart, you scan them, you put them in a bag, you take the bag and you put it back in your cart. The future of shopping is not self-checkout lines, it's Amazon Go. Until it's just Amazon, and I'll explain this. When I was in Seattle a few years ago, I shopped at an Amazon Go store and it was an eye-opening experience. After setting myself up with a special app which attaches to my credit card, I walk into the store, I take items off the shelf, I scan them with my phone, I put them into a bag that's in my cart and then, when I'm done selecting all my items, I take the bags and I walk out of the store. No checkout personnel, no self-checkout, no baggers Bam. I think Amazon Go is an intermediary step that takes us from registers to RFID coded items that will charge you when you leave the store, and then the future, I think, becomes 100% delivery with drones and autonomous self-driving cars. But for right now, I'll take my chances with the self-checkout option and try.
Speaker 1:Thought to end this 2022 holiday episode, I talk a little bit about the recent 2022 PNC parent-child PGA event in Orlando, florida. The two-day scramble featured Tiger and Charlie, and you know I enjoy watching the Woods's team limp their way around the golf course to compete for the coveted trophy. The similarities between the two are just uncanny and their competitive relationship with Justin Thomas and his dad is worth the price of admission. What I gather from watching the event for the past several years is that it means something special to the players and their families like no other event. The only other event that comes close is the par three competition, a practice round on Wednesday at the Masters, where players have their families walk with them and sometimes tee it up. My son, matt, and I get together, weather permitting, we try and find time to tee it up, and watching him blast 300-yard drives down the middle of the fairway gives me pleasure. Gives me pleasure knowing that I introduced him to a game that my father introduced me to, a game that's taken me to places I might not have visited otherwise, people that I might not have met or had the pleasure of walking down the fairways with, and a soul-fulfilling endeavor that re-energizes me whenever I hit that shot that I visualized, made that slippery, winding putt on a path that I calculated and executed, and, most importantly, the hands that I shook at the end of the round, signifying that we all did this together. And with that, I bid you all a happy and healthy holiday.
Speaker 1:This is Rich Easton. Telling Tales from beautiful Charleston, south Carolina. Talk to you next year. Outro Music.