| Welcome to
the forums! Before you enter, I'd like to spend a minute talking
to you a little bit about cash registers. |
| I believe the first encounter I ever had with cash registers was
when I was four years old. My mother bought me a Fisher-Price
cash register to play with. I didn't want to be mean to my
mother, as she was very nice to me and never once beat me or said mean
things about me. But it was simply inadequate. When one
depressed the "1" key, keys 2 through 9 would follow suit. It
was as if each button was molded of a single piece of plastic.
Unsurprisingly, the buttons (or button, if you ask me) did not
yield any sort of action or stimulus apart from a rather unspectacular
"ding". What purpose could this possibly serve?
I'm reminded of Charles Babbage when he explained to his audience the nature of his invention, the Analytical Engine, which was arguably the first complex computing machine. A woman raised her hand and asked, "Mr. Babbage, what if I enter the wrong numbers? What if I push the wrong buttons? Will the machine still give the correct answer?" Of course, Mr. Babbage chuckled and explained to the woman that the machine relied on the quality of input by the user to yield the "correct" output. Was that woman still alive and well some 140 years later, in 1985? Was she on the payroll as a consultant or product developer for Fisher-Price? I ask this because her spirit was clearly alive and well in the plastic-and-sticker manifestation of ill-suitability that was the Fisher-Price cash register. The dynamic properties of the register do not quell these questions; they only spawn new ones. What is the purpose of the "ding"? What message is it meant to convey, apart from "ALERT! BE WARNED! You are pressing the button which you are pushing!" ? Secondly, the handheld "scanner" scanned nothing. I took the liberty of grabbing an empty box of a stereo system my parents just bought. Its reported value was [smiley face]. I then scooted a stool up to the kitchen counter, wriggled my way above it, reached in a cabinet, and retrieved a can of green beans. It also rung up as [smiley face]. "Unlikely!" I exclaimed. "Can I grow a transistor radio from a stalk in the ground? Must my greens by manufactured by a procession of linear smiling Chinamen?" This is an open letter from a concerned American consumer to the cash register developers, manufacturers, and salespeople around the world: Take pride in your work. Mount the number keys individually. Install safeguards to ensure that an opportunistic individual does not walk into your client's department store, pay for a jar of mayonnaise, and walk out (or ride off!) with a brand-new lawnmower. Make no mistake, the system of checks and balances is alive and well in the economics of manufacture. If they find something suitable, do you suppose they will sit on their thumbs and rock back and forth upon them? Of course not. They will dial you up or write you a letter, and you will be held accountable. This isn't a threat, it's a "heads-up". Thank you for your time, Progressive Boink forum members. I've just had that pot of water boiling on my stove for quite a time, and it was high time I either pour it in my flowerpot or make some coffee.
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