Self Checkout

A while back at my local home improvement center I noticed some checkout lanes that were do-it-yourself lanes. I have tried to stay away from these things. They don't offer me a discount for using it. If I'm paying full service price I want full service. The gas stations of yesteryear offered a full service island with full service prices and a self service island with discounted prices. Sending me to a self service checkout and charging me full service prices is akin to making the ice cream carton smaller but lowering the price. You are cheating me. If you want to gauge me raise the price. Don't treat me like you think I'm so stupid that I wont notice you gauging me by making the product smaller or give me less service for my money.

I admit that sometimes if I only have 1 or 2 items and the full service lanes are full I'll go to the self service lane. The other day my son and I went to the grocery store. We picked up 6 or 7 items and decided to go to the self checkout to save time. When I tried to input the code for the bananas, celery and lettuce it would tell me that I had entered an invalid number. So I cheated and used the picture method. I found and touched the picture of the product. I got the same results. I had two bottles of cranberry juice that weren't in the database. Five times a message popped up on the screen telling me that an attendant had been notified. Five times the attendant never even looked my way. I had to walk or yell over to the attendant show her the item I'm trying to purchase so that she could push some buttons on her screen. The product then showed up my my screen so I put in the grocery bag to try to scan the next item. At that point a message would pop up telling me to remove the last item from the bagging area. Again I'd have to get the attendant to push some buttons so I could continue. The attendant, by the way, was a 70+ year old woman who was only interested in making small talk to other store employees and not in giving me the service I'm still paying for.

A half hour later as we left the store my son said "Next time lets just go the the checkout line that has a person". I agreed and we will.