I heart those self serve check out thingeys at a certain store that is super. What I hate is when people with huge orders go through them, or people who can't even use a personal comptuter let a computer with a barcode reader and cash machine attached to it. Never fails I get there and there is someone there who has no idea what they are doing. In 95 percent of the cases when I was there, it would have been quicker for the person in front of me to wait in line and go through a cashier checkout where the person taking your order through knows what the hell they are doing.

The solution? I don't know... max out the age of people who can use these devices at 40? Limit the number of items going through them?

At anyrate, here is a brief run down of how these things work:

1. The machines CAN tell that you put an item in the bag or not. If the item doenst fit in a standard grocery bag, go through the checkout because you're jsut creating trouble resulting in the supervisor person havign to come and make adjustments...usually you just do the same stupid thing again.

2. It knows when you have items that are not rang through yet.

3. a wrinkled up, half torn bill won't be read by the macine. There isnt little people under these machines running a hidden cash register, the macine actualy scans the bill. Most imperfections will result int he bill not being read, so dont bother.

I have never worked at this store nor in a capacity simmilar to it but the above is just common sense. Next time you're there with two cart loads.. time yourself, and realize that you could get it done so much faster if you just went through the register and let trained people do it for you.

Bla to Self Checkout