Self-Checkouts
Self-checkouts? I will come right out and say it - I am not a big fan of them. Like others, I strongly suspect that self-checkouts were brought in to cut staff costs. If customers are scanning, bagging and paying for their items then supermarket staff don't have to do that. The only time I feel happy about self-checkouts is when I have no more than a handful of items to process. This allows me to avoid joining queues at the manned checkouts. In contrast, the worst time to use a self-checkout is when you have a full trolley of items and the manned checkouts are all closed. It can take ages. Often I cannot easily locate the barcodes and the machines with their sensitive scales frequently react belligerently with "Unexpected item in bagging area" announcements etc or flashing red lights to alert supervisors. I much prefer to load my trolley items onto the conveyor belt and then let somebody else do the scanning work. It seems that self-checkouts are as...