Hey I'm gonna tell you a story about the cyberpunk dystopia we live in.

Recently one of those cashier-less Amazon grocery stores that uses RFID tages and Amazong accounts instead of people and cash opened near me.

This story is about the Chinese supermarket across the street.

Earlier this morning, in between the meditative and anxious states during morning meditation, I told myself I will have hot pot for dinner. So I went to the Chinese supermarket.

As soon as I walked in the middle aged woman at the door yelled "hey pretty boy, whatcha buying?"

I was confused as heck and was about to go okay I guess that's not the worst way of being misgendered when I realized that she wasn't talking to me.

She was talking to this Chinese man in his 50s? 60s? behind me.

"Hey pretty boy, whatcha buying?" asked the lady sanitizing carts and making sure the place didn't have too many people inside.

"Everything in the store!" came the reply from the man, who I'm pretty sure was smiling under the mask.

The woman started laughing. "Everything? With that little cart?"

The man, who had a small grocery cart, just went, "yep!" And he laughed too.

And I was so distracted by this exchange I almost didn't even see the the Taiwanese tomato noodles on sale.

So it turns out every person---especially the middle-aged women---who worked in the store knew this guy.

And when I was at the checkout, he was at the lane next to mine. He was like "do you have snail noodles?"

Before I could say anything (I was literally loading my bag of snail noodles on to the conveyor belt) the cashiers were all like "yeah they're up in the front, just behind the mooncakes".

And he shuffled away from the checkout and came back with two cases of noodles.

This man REALLY liked his snail noodles.

Anyway, from his accent I'm pretty sure he's Cantonese. He knew exactly when to switch to Mandarin to banter with the middle-aged ladies who didn't speak Cantonese.

Soon I lost track of him because I got distracted by the wine cabinet.

This story isn't only about the pretty boy that all the ladies flirted with, though.

It's also about the older white guy taking a younger man through the soups and curries aisle, telling him that this is where the Good Stuff is.

It's also about the Hispanic butcher and the Chinese housewife trying to communicate to each other with gestures and not so perfect English.

She wanted 3 pounds of a meat. He confirmed by raising his hand, three fingers straight and his thumb and index finger forming a circle. Neither gave a shit about the fact that a bunch of cowardly white racists who want them both to die have co-oped that symbol.

It's also about everyone trying to navigate around a crowded store while giving each other space because there's a literal fucking plague going on so we try to be good to each other.

It's also about the Indian supermarket next door, filled with the same people and the same stories, except with a different skin color and a different focus in the spices.

And the restaurants, all owned by local families, everyone an immigrant, all sitting empty during lunch hour with the occasional take out order.

Some are doing better than others, with a takeout bento box culture or a fast food nature behind them.

Some are pivoting to pastries.

And there's all the people, parking with hazards flashing in fire lanes, trying to grab their lunch as quickly as possible, because everything is a god damned mess right now and loitering in a strip mall probably isn't a good idea.

And the thing is, this place is a fucking mess.

It was a fucking mess even when the world wasn't on fire.

Because people, even the ones who aren't assholes, are fucking messy.

And, look, this place isn't perfect. It's still problematic. Like I'm still side eyeing the Chinese supermarket sometimes because they spent the last three years soliciting investors for a boarding school.

If you're running a school and you're turning a good profit, you're fucking up the school part.

If you're telling investors to expect a profit, you're fucking up the honesty part.

Either way, problematic.

And like, nobody who works at the strip mall knows what to do with me.

But even with all the awkwardness and the staring and the misgendering I still prefer this place over The Store of The Future where I don't have to interact with anyone.

I'd take awkward cashier transactions even though we have to navigate around The Plague and language barriers and culture and gender and all that messy ass stuff over the omnipresent Alexa RFID field or whatever tech the clean futuristic apex of capitalism has.

What I'm saying is, at around 1PM today, I decided to choose Humanity.

I always thought when I finally declare that I would choose humanity over whatever cybernetic crap the Dystopia is offering it'd be, like, "I reject this implant that gives me +1 str because I want to retain my soul so I can cast magic" of some other Shadowrun thing.

But no, our cyberpunk dystopia is boring as fuck.

Also, like, fuck Jeff Bezos.

Addendum: I am aware that being able to shop in person in a grocery store is a privilege and that some technological advances are great accessibility aids. Grocery delivery and curbside pickup are awesome! This is... not it though.