“Nature’s Finest”

“100% Pure”

“A Single Green Coconut in a Can”.

Straight from the nut. 100% organic. Except, of course, the aluminium can.

Today after work I feel especially exhausted. Sick from screens. Ill from HR managers in Gestapo uniforms with five figure salaries. Medicine as fast-food culture. The word ‘feedback’ façade, double think for authoritarian orders. Compliance over creativity.

To ground myself from the cerebral realm of consumer-based productivity, I find sanity in coconut water. Even if it is in a can.

The coconut aisle is right in front of the entry. I march forward past the mandarins and snatch a can of nature’s finest squeezed into factory-line aluminium. The can feels cool and thin in my grasp.

I file into the self-checkout maze. My final boss is yet another screen. I bleep my can. A reasonable price tag of $2.70. The computer bloops back:

“FINAL AMOUNT: $3.20”.

$3.20 - $2.70 = $ 0.50.

A 50-cent lie.

I am numb from numbers. Boxed punch-drunk by boxes and ticks. Fevered by feedback and pillared performance reviews.

This 50-cent lie is too much to bear.

My job as a medical scribe teeters on the balance beam of modern medicine. On one side lie notes, pathology forms, history-taking, dates, weight, schedulers and reports. And on the other, a sick human. In pain. Or simply confused. Mistaking physiology with dissatisfaction and discomfort.

However, my shift is over, and I am far away from these modern paradoxes. Or so I thought.

I wish to be a free man in Woolies. I will not bow down to despotic robots. I snatch my can and go to find a checkout aisle manned by a human.

There is only one checkout line tucked besides the exit. There is a customer in front of me. A scion of this Metropolitan Woolies. Young, snug with a backpack. Neatly tucked into a blazer, he stands eyes cast down. With his ears plugged into wireless earbuds, he almost seems possessed. He looks at the screen, bleeps his card, all without exchanging a single word. His senses have been cast into another realm controlled by electronic demons.

I proceed to the cashier and look up to her eyes. She is an older woman with wrinkles radiating out of her eyelids that seems to add a layer of kindness. As I look up, I find the warmth.

“Hello”.

I felt relieved and partly surprised. The last 10 hours of my life, particularly the last 10 minutes, have been pulleyed by the cold blue stare of pixels. I did not expect to find friendliness in a Metropolitan Woolworths.

I explain my 50-cent betrayal. The Human Lady takes the can, goes to the aisle and checks the price. She interfaces with the barcodes and the numbers on the aisle. She whispers something to the Stacking Man. She returns with the same can and leans close.

“Thanks for pointing that out. You take this one.”

I nod in thanks and smile. Her eyes again meet mine and a pact is formed. We are engaged in a conspiracy. A heist of human kindness breaks the rules. Inventories, profit margins, barcodes and scanners cannot contain the spontaneity of human experience.

I walk out and flip off the two scanner-pillars that bulwark the exit. Free from the steel can of Woolworths with nature’s finest.