If you shop at Whole Foods, you’ll see this laminated poster at the check-out line, not only warning you to KEEP YOUR DISTANCE (“STOP”), with two big blue arrows telling you exactly where to stand (apart), but, on top of that, alerting you that “your money is no good here,” as Lloyd, the ghostly bartender, tells Jack Torrance in the Gold Room at the Overlook Hotel.
Specifically, your CASH is now unwanted; though it’s still possible to pay with your infectious bills at “customer service,” where your money would be made to feel about as welcome as some black person’s in some Mississippi soda shop in 1956.
In checking out, I asked the woman at the register (the two of us appropriately masked), if this meant that Whole Foods is no longer taking CASH, and she explained the New Normal, about “customer service,” etc.; and then she said, with a look of keen revulsion, that “money—is—just—filthy,” by which she clearly did not mean that it’s the root of all evil. It’s covered with viruses, she said, which is why Whole Foods has made this change.
“No, it isn’t,” I said, stupidly (as is my way). “They’re getting rid of cash so that—” She squeezed her eyes shut, shook her head, and said, with great approval, that China’s burned all their something (I couldn’t make it out, what with that mask), presumably in order to save everyone from death-by-COVID-19.
The cashless world—just like the brainless world—is now upon us. (Since Amazon will soon be operating many, if not most, of what used to be small businesses, there won’t be many places left to spend a few bucks on a meal, or shopping.)
