THIS week I have been mainly... spending money, as usual. Some has been other people's, but sadly even that was only me getting them to pay me back for what I spent pursuing my job.

Yes, I made an expenses claim.

Many years ago – and unfortunately before I became a hack – journalists were renowned for their creativity in extracting money from their employers. They collected receipts like a cat collects fleas. They made claims that would make an MP blush. No moat was uncleared, no floating duckhouse unvarnished.

Then a couple of decades ago the system was tightened up. Today it is easier to get half a litre of B Positive from a lump of granite, because human contact has been removed. Everybody in the entire company files through the same on-line system.

I am my own accountant at work, much as I am now expected to be my own checkout assistant in the supermarket. The other day I was about to join a queue longer than the Mississippi when an assistant urged me to try one of the self-scan checkouts.

"You've just got a basket? It is very quick and simple," she said, leading me off for an encounter with the unmanned. "It'll change the way you shop just like the hole-in-the-wall changed the way you bank."

Simple, yes. Quick, no.

"Item not found. Please scan again," said the computer in an urgent female whisper every time I tried to put through one of the yellow-sticker reduced items.

Each time the smiling assistant had to press a few buttons before the

computer say yes

.

Twice the computer told me off for not putting my stuff in the carrier bag properly. I could have swum the length of north America's greatest river in the time it took me to bag a dozen groceries, putting me in dread of the future: the biggest supermarket chain is planning to open self-checkout-only stores. You can imagine the chaos when they're introduced in Newcastle: thousands of Geordies in their black-and-white stripes being beeped at just for wearing a footie shirt.

"Item not found. Please scan again."

The inexorable drive towards fewer and fewer smiling face-to-face interactions continued, when I went DIY shopping. Our electric shower went kaput last week and turned our bathroom into a scene from the last moments of the Titanic. Determined not to buy online because (a) I like to do business face-to-face (b) there's a postal strike on so by the time the new shower reached us our kids would need scraping, not washing and (c) even switched off the shower was managing to produce almost as much water as when it was on, I set out for a DIY shop. I pictured being able to browse at my leisure, to peruse whole aisles of showering perfection. But no. I entered a 'showroom' smaller than my garden shed and was instructed by a notice to select the number from the catalogue and hand the form to the assistant. I would have lost my grip on reality and run screaming from the premises but my wife was at home doing her impression of Kate Winslet in the last few moments before Leonardo DiCaprio loses his grip on the floating wreckage. So I did as I was told and a box duly appeared from behind a screen. I headed home happy in the knowledge that at least I would get some human interaction when the thing was fitted. Well, almost. The plumber sounded less human than the checkout computer when the phone rang at about the time he was due at my house. "It's the plumber." Pause.

Ah yes.

Longer pause.

And...?

"Where's y'house?"

I told him, and a few seconds later he pulled up outside. I met him with a cheery greeting. He greeted me with three words that he turned into a question: "Move your car?"

Well, there's plenty of room at the side there.

"Got tools in the back." I reassured myself that his few words meant: "Would you mind freeing up the drive, please, so I may reverse up to the gate? This will ensure greater security for my valuable work essentials and minimise the time spent toing and froing, thereby reducing the cost to you."

Once inside, he didn't ask where the bathroom was. He simply raised his eyebrows and was led there. I think he said about 15 more words in the next 30 minutes. Six of those were repeats, and included the shock use of a pronoun: "You can turn the water on."

He became more fluent only when he got his cheque: £130 for 40 minutes (30 of work, 10 arriving and departing). I think machines are underrated.