Dec 15, 2016 3 min read

So Amazon is planning special high-tech stores where shoppers will pick up the items they want and walk out without paying. The technology will track the items on a phone app, allowing shoppers to avoid the checkout lines and pay later.

It’s just another example of how automation is bringing progress to the way we live. But it’s also an example of how technological genius has some annoying gaps.

I’m talking about stickers and price tags, the clingy bits of extraneous information that still show up on everything new that comes into the house. I bought a bunch of apples this week, and before I could eat any of them I had to scrape off the stickers that announce they are apples. Ditto the avocadoes and the oranges I brought home. Why haven’t the brainy, techy ones figured out a way to attach the information without all the glue? In most cases, the stickers are redundant because the price information is already on shelf tags.

I’m thinking about this now because I’ve been wrapping Christmas presents. Instead of waiting until Christmas Eve, when I am looking at a hill of gifts to be wrapped and hating the task, I’ve decided to wrap as I go. Yesterday, the stickers were winning.

I bought my daughter a special makeup mirror, round and magnified and about the size of a healthy pancake. Right smack in the middle of each side’s glass was a large sticker. One said what the mirror was made of, and the other said where it was made. Both stickers were the kind that do not come off in one piece when coaxed carefully. These were affixed with the glue they must use to hold the wings on jetliners. With the placement of that sticker, you would never see your nose in that mirror, not that I’d want to anymore. After 10 minutes of scraping I finally attacked the mirror with eye makeup remover. There’s still a mark there.

This is also a problem on picture frames, something I buy a few of each holiday. They could put the sticker on the back, but no. The frame I wanted had the sticker smack in the center of the glass. Don’t these manufacturers know that most shoppers will see what they want on the shelf, and if they are interested enough, will turn over the item for more information? A few of the framed photos in my house still have little glue smudges on the glass, now covered with all the dust they’ve attracted.

There’s a product called Goo Gone, and it’s a solvent meant to remove stickers. The stores would make a bundle if they gave it shelf space next to the picture frames and the mirrors and the apples. And mangoes. There is no way to get a sticker off a mango without taking the skin with it.

Remember when you were a kid and you’d get a banana and take the Chiquita sticker off and put it on your forehead and sing the song? Those stickers peel right off bananas and foreheads.

Why can’t everybody use those stickers? They would have people all over the world with their product stickers on their heads, making up songs about apples and mirrors and picture frames.

Or get rid of the stickers altogether. That would be progress.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.