I haven’t yet decided if I’m a fan of the Supermarket Self-Checkout or not. I agree with the article in the sense that if you only have a few items, it’s much faster. (The faster you can get that pint of Ben & Jerry’s out of the store, the better!)
When I have more items, however, I have to admit that sometimes the thought of running all of them across the scanner, waiting for verification, and bagging them is just too much work, especially after a long day. On those occasions, I’d rather lean on my cart behind the person in front of me, and amuse myself with tabloid headlines while I wait/rest, and then let someone ELSE do all the work.
Speaking of tabloids… I wonder what kind of impact the self-checkout is having on impulse purchases. For instance, in the one local store that has self-checkouts, there are no impulse items nearby at all – I suppose that’s because there are no clerks around? Hmm.