Emma Zayer

I rarely get rung up by supermarket workers nowadays thanks to the fantastic advent of the self-checkout machine, a wonderful device that allows me to scan, bag and pay for groceries all on my own. Since I usually only buy a few items each trip - a handheld basket's worth at most - I'm drawn to the ease and speed of the self-checkout. Plus, I get to bag my items exactly as I please. (ie: If I have two bags, that means perishables in one and non-perishables in the other. Just makes sense when it comes time to sort at home.)

However, all-too-often I encounter people clogging up the self-checkout system. In my opinion, there are two main types of people who should not be using these machines:

The person with a cart overflowing with goods. When you have a lot of items and only two hands, that's usually a good time to take advantage of regular checkout, where the clerk can swipe while you bag. Sometimes there's even a bagger to help too. I realize the self-checkout says nothing about being express, but I've always thought of it as being somewhat that way by nature. I've never stuck around long enough to watch, but I just don't think that one person can efficiently swipe, bag and re-cart 40 items on his own. Especially because most of the people I see with a full cart at the self-checkout look a bit confused about the process to begin with. Which brings me to category number 2...

People who do not know how to use a self-checkout machine. At all. Yes, only a few months ago I was a self-checkout newbie, and even now I sometimes encounter minor problems. But it took very little time for me to learn how to operate one of these things even though I've never worked in a supermarket.

I hate to stereotype, but most of the people I've seen trying to use the self-checkout while simultaneously being bewildered by it are older folks. In the most egregious cases (to be melodramatic, but you get the idea), I've seen people using them who flat-out do not understand the machines and, after scanning their items, expect the store's one self-checkout employee to complete the transaction. At that point, you really should just be using the regular line.

More commonly, however, I see people who want to know how to use it and think they know how to use it...and they don't. In their frustration, they prefer to blame the machine for being wonky instead of accepting that they aren't using it correctly. And thus, they hold me up in line for twice as long as their transcations should take.

The inspiration for this post came when I was at Giant supermarket in the self-checkout line earlier this week. A couple in their late 60s or 70s had about a dozen items which the wife was bagging at the end of the conveyor belt and the husband was scanning about two feet away from me. He didn't understand where on the scale the bar codes should be scanned, so I think it was pure luck that most of his items had already gone through. He also had a slow learning curve when it came to using the touch-screen menu to select items without bar codes.

I hopped on this line because the man had four items left. 'Should only take a minute,' I thought. But oh, was I wrong. I watched him stare at the touch-screen like it was written in Greek. Once he decided to not pursue that route, instead of cancelling the screen to return to regular scanning he just picked up his tub of butter and started waving it around in a confused matter over the scanner. I leaned in to lightly offer some help, which he followed. Though when I also tried to tell him about the proper way to face the bar codes, he huffed that he knew where the bar code was on the product already. (I think his frustration was at the cherry tomatoes and the scanner, not at me. But should the self-checkout really be causing high blood pressure??)

With two or three items still left, another woman got behind me on line. She was borderline in my first category - a single person with a cart half-filled with items - but I didn't have the energy to cast judgment upon her in my mind because I was too tired from standing for eight minutes watching the older man fumble with the machine. She also shot me a sympathetic glance, which helped. Even the guy's wife was starting to get an apologetic look on her face.

Finally, the self-checkout attendant came to our lane for the second time during this dozen item-transaction and rang up the butter. This entire butter process only took as long as my subsequent transaction did total.

Thankfully the self-checkout usually doesn't have long lines, which is partly a testament to all those people who must know how to use it efficiently. I try my best to be one of them.