I don’t know exactly when it happened, but one day I found myself standing in the self-checkout line at the grocery store, wondering when everything had gotten so quiet.
The store wasn’t empty. It was busy enough that every register was occupied, and people were weaving shopping carts around one another like they always had. Kids were asking for candy near the checkout lanes. Shopping carts bumped into each other. People loaded their grocery bags and headed toward the parking lot. On the surface, nothing felt unusual.
I wasn’t hearing the cashier ask someone how their day was going. I wasn’t hearing the older gentleman in front of me talking about the weather because that’s what he always did while waiting in line. I wasn’t hearing the employee who used to recognize regular customers or ask someone how their kids were doing. There wasn’t even the awkward conversation that happened when somebody wrote a check, forgot an item, or had a coupon that wouldn’t scan.
You don’t walk into a grocery store looking for conversation. You go there to buy milk, cereal, bread, and whatever else wasn’t on the list. But somewhere between the produce section and the parking lot, those little interactions became part of the experience. Sometimes the cashier made you laugh after a long day. Sometimes the person behind you complained about how expensive everything had become. And before you knew it, three strangers were having the same conversation. Sometimes you ran into someone you hadn’t seen in years and spent twenty minutes talking in the parking lot.
None of those moments were planned, and none of them showed up on your calendar.
I used to know exactly where my favorite teller worked. She wasn’t a friend, but I knew her name and always enjoyed seeing her. I didn’t know anything about her life outside the bank. But after enough deposits, withdrawals, and random conversations, she became someone I genuinely looked forward to seeing. We’d exchange a few words, she’d ask how business was going, I’d ask about her weekend, until the next time.
Most of my banking now happens on my phone. When I do go inside a branch, there’s a good chance I’ll use a kiosk, an ATM, or speak with someone I’ll probably never see again.
Then I started noticing the same thing in other places. Restaurants replaced cashiers with kiosks. Coffee shops wanted you to order before you got there. None of those changes felt like a big deal on their own, but after a while, I couldn’t help noticing they were all heading in the same direction.
Then COVID happened, and whatever had already been changing suddenly moved into overdrive. Delivery became normal. Remote work became normal. Church moved into our living rooms. Restaurants brought food to our cars instead of our tables, and before long, it wasn’t unusual to get through an entire day without talking to someone you didn’t already know.
When things finally opened back up, many of those habits stuck because people realized they actually liked avoiding traffic, ordering ahead, having groceries delivered to the front door, skipping lines, and getting errands done without leaving home. I did too. That’s probably why it took me so long to notice what had changed.
It just made me wonder if we’d been looking at convenience the wrong way. For years, I thought it was simply about making life easier, and maybe it is. But somewhere between that grocery store, the bank, and everything that changed after COVID, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we’d quietly traded away something else too. At that point, I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was. I just knew I kept noticing it.
The funny thing is, I wasn’t against any of it.
I used self-checkout, ordered ahead, deposited checks from my phone… honestly, if there was a faster option, I usually took it. Like everyone else, I appreciated saving time because life already felt busy enough. For a while, I figured I was just overthinking it.
A few days later, I’d walk into a coffee shop and notice people coming in just long enough to grab a drink they had already paid for. Another day, I’d stop by the bank and realize I hadn’t seen the same teller in years because I barely went inside anymore. None of those things seemed important on their own. They just felt… different.
If you gave me the choice today between waiting in line for twenty minutes or using self-checkout, I’d pick self-checkout every time. I don’t miss standing in line, writing checks, or driving to the bank just to deposit one. If anything, I’d probably make the same choices all over again.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized I wasn’t really thinking about grocery stores. I was thinking about all the people I’d gotten used to seeing without ever really thinking about them. They weren’t friends or family, just familiar faces that somehow became part of everyday life.
The cashier you recognized, even if you never knew their last name. The teller who smiled when you walked in. Somehow, they stopped feeling like strangers, even though you never really knew them.
I never woke up one morning and decided I didn’t want those interactions anymore. If anything, I probably chose the faster option every chance I got. That’s why this has been so hard for me to figure out. Nobody took those moments away from me.
Looking back, there wasn’t one decision that changed everything. It was a series of choices that all made perfect sense at the time, and I’d probably make every one of them again. I just never stopped to think about what they might add up to.
Maybe that’s the trap. Not that convenience made life worse. In many ways, it made life better. I can get more done in less time than I ever could twenty years ago, and if I’m being honest, I’m not interested in going backward. Most of us aren’t.
What I’ve been wrestling with is something different.
I keep wondering whether we became so focused on making life more efficient that we stopped noticing the value of the things that were never efficient to begin with. Waiting in line wasn’t fun. Driving to the bank wasn’t fun. None of us woke up hoping the grocery store would take a little longer than expected. But every now and then those ordinary moments gave life a chance to interrupt us, and I’m not sure we appreciated them until there were fewer of them.
Maybe that’s why I keep coming back to that grocery store. It isn’t because I miss the cashier. It’s because I miss the feeling of walking through a world where there was still room for those little, unplanned moments to happen.
The irony is that convenience really did give us more time, and I believe that’s a good thing. What I honestly don’t know is what we’ve done with it. Maybe we’ve spent it with the people who matter most. Maybe we’ve just filled it with something else. I don’t know.
I just know that somewhere between self-checkout, mobile banking, food delivery, and everything else that made life a little easier, the world got a little quieter.
