Grass Valley, CA — Cedar Ridge resident Tommy Empire attempted on Wednesday afternoon to have a Siri-like conversation with a Safeway self-checkout machine.
The creation of the modern smart phone assistant, like Apple’s Siri and Google’s Now, many have found hours of entertainment asking said artificial intelligence “helpers” all kinds of funny and inappropriate questions. however for some, the technology is alien and impersonal.
“Well, the god damned thing didn’t answer back,” said a frustrated Mr. Empire from his Cedar Ridge home. “It kept asking me to enter things and put things in the bags, so I asked the computer if it loved me. It didn’t respond.”
According to the checker who oversees the self-checkout aisle, Mr. Empire seemed very confused from the moment he approached the Gentran 40-123 automated checker.
“He was a little agitated,” said grocery clerk Mary Dunkendor. “He was obviously in a hurry and didn’t want to wait in line. That almost always spells trouble for new customers. Anyhow, he started asking the machine question. You know, like people do with Siri. But when the machine didn’t answer back, be got very angry.”
According to other customers in line, Mr. Empire asked as series of inappropriate questions including:
- Do you love me?
- Why are fire trucks red?
- Does eating celery actually burn more calories to eat it?
- How much is beef jerky?
- Where is #$$%#!@! this god !@#$ !@$@@#?
“I’m never going to use that Siri checkout thing again,” continued Mr. Empire. “It works about as well as my smartphone my wife bought for me. Which is not at all.”
