ABC Everyday You might feel worried or stressed even if you know nothing is wrong. ( Share Print text only I'm at the supermarket, and I'm worried the self-checkout machine is judging me. Well, I'm worried it's judging how long I'm taking to find the barcode on each item. It's a race against the clock to get each thing scanned before the dreaded error message returns. My shoulders tighten in a familiar squeeze. "Just get this done, then we can relax." Why am I so afraid of a simple error message on a checkout machine? The whole shopping trip has felt like this. Before making it to the checkout, there was the shopping itself, and the regular jolts of tension I find go hand in hand with navigating any busy space (pandemic or no pandemic).