Supermarket ‘face scan’ spots wide faces – refuses to sell them cake

‘Beep! No butter for you, Mr Wilson. Or shampoo.’

A local shop keeper claims to have developed a ‘face scanning’ tool, that can automatically target fat people and then deny them biscuits or doughnuts.

But sceptics have claimed that the inventor is just shouting ‘beep!’ himself, and then making personal remarks about local known pie botherers.

Woodrow Gunther, owner of Harold’s second-favourite supermarket, ‘Guntco’s’,  claims he developed the device to ‘help save the public from themselves’.

“If I see someone waddle into the store and sweat their way straight past the salad area, I can persuade them to turn back thanks to the help of technology”, claimed Gunther.

“I just beam them in the face and it automatically makes me shriek ‘beep!’. Then I just read out what the machine tells me to say, in a voice a bit like a robot.”

Pippa Delaney was incensed when the machine claimed to spot brown sauce on her chin, and refused to sell her a ham balm and a packet of rubbing bacon.

“I might have put on a pound or too lately, I’ve got a medical condition that causes me to sleep-eat the odd cake”, claimed Delaney. “But I didn’t expect to be confronted by a bloody machine yelling ‘beep! vegetarian my arse’.”

I’m also sceptical that Gunther has to snigger ‘to clear out the old data’, and I’m damned sure it didn’t blind Ron Ronsson by itself and then pelt him with Ryvita.”

Gunther admits that the technology has experienced a few teething problems, particularly when it mistakenly diagnosed Nigel Thorvald with cankles. “Nigel and I had a brief exchange and he’s recalibrated the machine for me now”, said Gunther. “And my left eye is already healing quite nicely.”

Paul Watts, manager at rival store Tesco, conceded that their facial scanning technology might also be able to target unhealthy customers with optimised adverts, but probably wouldn’t bother, given the state of Gunther’s face.

“At the end of the day, we don’t really care if our customers live or die”, said Mr Watts. “Just as long as they don’t go off and shop at Asda.”