First-Name Basis At Hy-Vee

I’m now on a first-name basis with the cashiers at Hy-Vee. I first noticed this last week as I was picking up my bag of groceries, when the cashier, handing me the receipt, said in quite a friendly manner, “Have a good day, J.L.” I didn’t think much of it at the time. Maybe she’d overheard someone in line refer to me by name (though there is rarely anyone in line who even knows me, let alone refers to me by name). Maybe she had been a student of mine in the distant past who I had cleansed from my memory (as is my wont). Whatever, it came and went. But then today as I was picking up my bag of groceries, a different cashier, handing me the receipt, again said in quite a friendly manner, “Have a good day, J.L.” This was clearly no coincidence. Something was up, something had changed, this had not happened before. And when I got home, I looked at the receipt and found what it was. Right there on the receipt, beneath the list of Dijon mustard, extra-sharp cheddar, oranges, and yellow-fin tuna, centered and in bold, was my name. So apparently because I pay for my groceries with a credit card, my name is forged on the receipt, a personal identification of purchase for the cashier to call out, a brand that follows me from the register to my car and home. I’m not sure what to make of this, but I find it uneasy, if not a little creepy. We live in a time of personal invasion. Big Brother long ago settled into our lives. I prefer to live as anonymously as I can, to be able to slink into and out of Hy-Vee to buy my mustard and cheese and tuna with a minimum of social interaction. Maybe that’s what I should tell Susan H. – the name of the cashier on my receipt – the next time I go through her line. If that really is her name.