"Ehm, No?" "Have you scanned or swiped your Club Card! ?" "I'm sorry, I don't have one." Have you. . ." and so on.

The problem with automated cashiers is that they don't really listen. They don't understand that I'm a bit groggy or feeling slightly fragile.

I have yet to use one of these humiliation machines without some kind of error occurring. Items need assistance. Things won't scan. "There is an unrecognised item in the checking area!" "I know, it's my keys, sorry."

Red-faced apologies to the members of the growing queue behind me.

"Please remove unidentified item from the checking area!" "Okay, don't get your circuits in a twist."

It's not that I ever had any meaningful relationship with the girl on the '10 Items or Less' check-out. Although I do miss the way she used to not make eye contact with me, as she scanned my items with the kind of detached interest usually given over to waiting on a bus.

The robot doesn't even do that for me. I don't like robotic interaction being forced upon me. I spend enough time each day conversing with a computer screen.

My . . . nearly always unnecessary . . . daily visits to the supermarket are because I crave human interaction, even if it's just the "20 Marlboro Lights please." "There you go." "Thanks, " kind.

Worse still, I don't even get a discount for checking out my own groceries. I just get to feel inadequate while other shoppers' eyes bore into my back as my frozen peas refuse to scan for the 20th time.

I've even started dreaming about it.

My recurring nightmare used to be that I'd be standing at the check-out line and look down to see that I'd forgotten to wear trousers; now my nightmare is I'm at the DIY check-out and I can't find the button for scallions. It's just as terrifying.

I've had enough of automated phones, check-outs, tellers and checkins. I have decided that I will not use the machine anymore. It's time to go back to dealing with humans; at least the check-out girl didn't make me feel small.

A machine did almost help me last week. My wallet was stolen. In the short time between realising it and calling up to cancel my credit card, a clearly dumber-than-average thief had tried to use it three times at an ATM.

I know this because the machine recorded each attempt, and notified the credit card control centre. The problem was that the human recipient failed to notify me.

I called up to cancel the card. The lady (a real live person) on the other end of the line . . . when I finally got to speak to a human . . . told me that someone had been trying to use it. I wasn't asked if I'd like to know where so I rang up again the next day and was given the location of the ATM.

I asked if she could access the footage from their cameras but was told "No, but you can notify the gardai, if you want." If I want? Of course I want my bloody wallet back. It was full of old receipts and other important stuff, like my club card and bus pass.

So I rang the gardai. "No sorry, the man you want to talk to is out on his lunch, he'll be back in two hours." So I rang back two hours later to talk to the man. "Who told you to ask for me?" "Ehm, the guy who answered the phone earlier." "What was his name?"

"His name? I didn't catch his name."

"Hmmm. . ." "Hello?" "Yeah, I'm still here, so what happened?" So I tell him the story. The upshot is that I have to go in to the gardai in person to make the complaint, but "there's no hurry, these things always take a long time."

Time indeed, by the time anyone gets around to doing anything the thief will have fled to Leitrim with my bus pass.

If only people at work could be a bit more reliable, a bit more efficient, a bit, well, less human? Then again. . .