Queen Elizabeth II‘s first encounter with a self-serve checkout very likely mirrored your own, as the British monarch reportedly pondered, out loud, whether it was possible to wander off with free groceries.
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The Sun reports that Queen Liz was treated to a tour of a pop-up Sainsbury’s museum in London, which shows how the local supermarket chain has evolved over its 150-year history.
After being shown what the chain has offered consumers in decades past, regional manager Damien Corcoran guided the monarch to an example of the latest and greatest in self-serve technology.
The Queen reportedly did not use the machine, but questioned how the system stops customers from just prancing off with goods scanned as a cheaper item.
“And you can’t trick it? You can’t cheat then?” she asked.
Corcoran said “Well, you always can cheat but with the weighing scales we’ve got that should prevent certain items from being undetected.”
The photos of the encounter show the Queen pondering the system.
She joins an ever-growing list of punters who have tested the technical and ethical limits of the time-saving system. In 2019, a French man quite audaciously scanned a PlayStation 4 through a self-serve checkout as some kind of fruit.
Closer to home, a Queensland woman was charged in 2017 after scamming supermarket self-serve systems for months on end.
Will the Queen ever come across a self-serve checkout in real life? It’s unlikely. But, if she ever does pop down to the shops for some chips and a choccy milk, she probably possesses the knowledge to pass both through as carrots.
