Grocery Store Self-Checkout

Self-checkout at the grocery store near campus has 8 stations and 1 attendant, and on a good day the whole system moves faster than the 2 staffed lanes. Scanners read barcodes quickly and the bagging area scale detects when you place an item, preventing the old problem of scanning things twice. But when the system fails it fails badly. Most of the attendant's time goes to overriding errors for produce codes, age-restricted items, and the dreaded unexpected item in bagging area message. I use it for 10 items or fewer and it works well for that. Interface is simple: scan, bag, pay. For a bigger cart I still go to the regular line because the time savings disappear after about 15 items.