[JoeAltmaier]

There' still a 'checkout chick' at WalMart by the self-service lanes. And a line waiting for her services.

Self-service has to improve an order of magnitude before I subject myself to the hassle and indignity. Want to buy a pocket-knife from the camping section? Alarm goes off, wait for the attendant to come type a code. Have an oversized item? Wait for the attendant to scan it manually. And where the heck is the code on these key-limes? Poke around at an opaque interface hoping to find the item in their manual menu, finally lie and call them lemons.

I never use the self-checkout even if the regular lines are considerable. Usually its broken or closed anyway, or nobody on duty.

The cure? Maybe rfid tags (have to come down from $0.75 to be practical) and an airlock where they scan your card and purchases and you're done. That would save lots of thrashing over the old grocery cart too - you have to handle every can of beans about 7 times with the current system.