Oh Nine

The woman’s voice at self-checkout in the supermarket is usually so even when she reads out the prices to me as a I scan the items. It’s a steady stream of “Six. Forty-three” or “Three. Seventeen.” It’s all in the same pleasant cadence, as if she couldn’t be happier to be totaling my groceries. It’s soothing.

Until I ring up something ending in 9 cents. Then something seems to curdle in the invisible woman’s delivery. If something costs $5.09, she’ll say “five” in a breezy tone. But I hear that “oh nine” with a scrim of darkness pulled across it. She’s clearly unhappy. She’s irritated. She’s impatient. And it’s like the fluorescent lights above me in the checkout lane dim just slightly.

What was going on the day this checkout woman recorded “09” in the sequence of numbers? Why was everything great through “08” and fine from “10” and up? I wonder …

Did she accidentally knock over her water bottle and soak her script right when she got to nine?

Did the person recording her in the studio fart or make some kind of rude gesture, causing her disgusted tone?

Is she philosophically opposed to the continued minting of the penny and thus annoyed that the customer will need 1 cent in change?

We may never know why the number 9 upsets her so. But I hope she’s doing OK.