Tonight I was plagued by dreams (or hallucinations, since I felt only half-asleep) of being at my post at work. I had a constant stream of customers and their groceries were all jumbled up on the conveyor belt. For some reason, perhaps because I was staring out through a sleep-induced haze, I couldn’t properly make out all the items the customers had laid out for me. As a result, I became confused by how I should organize their groceries and what items I should put together in a plastic bag.

I stood there, under the pressure to act quickly, desperately trying to take in all the items that they had. Failing, I finally gave up and fell back from the counter as a sign of surrender.

Then I reasoned with myself that it shouldn’t matter anyway that I wasn’t attending to them because wasn’t it 3a.m. and what customer in their right mind would be shopping at 3a.m., and wasn’t this all just a dream because the shops aren’t open at 3a.m.

It was at this point, in each of my checkout dreams, that I woke up. Oddly, though I was aware that it had been a dream, I was nevertheless unnerved by the fact that I hadn’t finished the transaction with the customer.