It is a few days before Christmas. I am out shopping at a well-known upscale department store in the Greater Boston area. I take nine items to the cash register. The cashier passes her magic wand over each package to read the bar code, and the impact printer rattles away as it prints a description and price for each item. I am getting ready to pull out my credit card when the woman turns to the cash register beside her and, horror of horrors, starts keying in the exact same information manually, reading the numbers off each package in turn.

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