CINCINNATI — Self-checkout machines across the country issued a joint clarification Tuesday, confirming that the long-standing warning “unexpected item in bagging area” has never referred to groceries, and was instead a reference to the shopper.

“We have been saying it for years,” read a statement delivered simultaneously through the speakers of an estimated 640,000 kiosks. “Please remove the unexpected item from the bagging area. We would like to be clear that the item is you.”

The announcement follows what the machines described as a “long and patient observation period,” during which they watched customers scan a single frozen pizza at 11:40 p.m., hesitate over a third bag of pre-shredded cheese, and attempt to enter the code for bananas while visibly holding a plantain.

Within minutes of the statement, an attendant was reportedly summoned at every location. Witnesses described the employees as arriving slowly, standing slightly too close, and tapping a single key on a handheld device that resolved nothing.

“The attendant isn’t there to fix the machine,” said Dr. Marguerite Vanterpool-Oyelaran, senior fellow at the Institute for Retail Shame Dynamics at the Lower Midwest College of Applied Judgment. “The attendant is there to look at your basket and say nothing. That is the service. The machine does the talking, and the human does the not-talking.”

The initiative, dubbed Project Bagging Area, includes several new features. Kiosks will now pause for an additional four seconds after a customer scans a bottle of wine and a single can of soup. They will also ask, “Is this everything?” in a tone that company documents describe as “warm, but not stupid.”

Customers reported mixed reactions. “I put one bag of ice on the scale and it told me I’d have to wait for assistance,” said Doug Fennimore-Pratt, 43, who was buying a bag of ice. “Then a woman in a lanyard looked at the ice, then at me, and said, ‘Rough night?’ It was a Tuesday morning. I was icing a cooler.”

Industry analysts say the change reflects a broader pivot toward what they call “transparent hostility.” For decades, kiosks relied on vague error messages like “Please wait for assistance” and “Item not recognized,” which executives now admit were “a coward’s way out.”

“Consumers deserve honesty,” said Brent Halvorsen, chief experience officer at CheckWell Systems and a man who has never once used a self-checkout machine. “If the machine is going to make you feel small, it should at least be upfront about it.”

“The attendant isn’t there to fix the machine. The machine does the talking, and the human does the not-talking.”

The machines also addressed the long-running mystery of the “approval needed” screen, which they said appears whenever a customer buys anything “interesting.” Sources confirmed that a single bag of lemons will trigger it, but three bags of lemons will not, because “at that point you’re clearly making something.”

At press time, the kiosks had resolved the unexpected item in the bagging area by asking the shopper to step back, take a breath, and think about what brought them to this moment.