Self Check-Outs

I'm not sure when this happened, but it was recent enough to still be fresh in mind, and it seemed appropriate to post here. I have come to loath self-checkout registers at grocery stores.

The other day I went to a Harris Teeter to get a sandwich for lunch, and all of the regular checkouts had really long lines with people buying enough food to last them the entire winter, so I went to the self checkout stations. 3 of the 4 stations were not working, but that was ok because there was only one person in line in front of me.

He stepped up to begin purchasing his few items and the machine prompted him to swipe his VIC card [very important customer]. He proceeded to take every card out of his wallet before he realized that he did not have such a card. -Nevermind the fact that you can just type in your phone number rather than swipe the card...not a big deal. He calmly began to put all of his credit, library, bookstore, mens warehouse, and AAA cards back into his wallet before scanning his food.

The gentleman attempted to scan a produce item without a sticker. After about 7 times of swiping some kind of squash, without a barcode, in a plastic bag, he realized he would have to go to the menu of the computer and tell the machine what he was buying. So he opened the menu and went to the produce section when he audibly said "I don't know what this is".
Maybe I'm a little bit odd, but I don't think I have ever bought food ...without knowing what it is

Oh well...after a good 5 min of checking each category he finally found a picture that looked like what he was buying and he was able to move on. He finished scanning his 5 or 6 other items and clicked the checkout button. At this point the computer audibly asks "Do you have any items under your cart?". The man just stood there in contemplation. I considered pointing out to him "dude you're holding a basket -the question isn't even applicable!".

After he finally realized that the "No" button was the appropriate choice it prompted him with another question "Do you have any coupons?" The guy proceeded to check every pocket of his pants to discover that he in fact did not have any coupons. Again maybe I'm weird...but I tend to know if I have coupons or not. Perhaps he has magic pants that sometimes produce coupons in his pockets and he wanted to check to see if there was some $1 off goodness had materialized.

Finally he paid with cash...which meant another 10 minutes of attempting to force wrinkly dollar bills into the cash slot. As he walked out I realized that I would have actually gotten through a good 10-15 minutes faster had I stood in line behind one of the customers with 1,000 items in the real checkout line...