[FourOnTheFloor]

And it almost always DOES go wrong. Seriously 75% of the time when I'm done scanning and I press "pay now," it inexplicably says "calling for assistance" and refuses to do anything until an employee comes over. WHY?

And now assholes are intentionally taking alcohol through the self-checkout, deliberately taking up that one employee's time making him or her perform the workaround to check the items out.

And the 20+ years of "unexpected item in the bagging area" bullshit... just get rid of it.

[kiwijamo]

Strangely that issue has almost vasnished for me in the last couple of years, here in New Zealand at least across the several supermarket chains I frequent (although they all seem to use the same self service POS supplier). Sure it was a big issue when these first came into stores but I think they've realised they need to increase the tolerances a bit (e.g. accept even if the weight is <1% off) and it all just works close to 100% of the time for me. I do however generally avoid adding bags to the weight area (as I've found these to trigger false warnings) and just load my shopping directly onto the weighted area and then once I've paid I'll just bag my shopping then. Works like a charm.

[imp0cat]

I do that, too (scan, pay then bag), but it's a tradeoff - you get smoother checkout experience in exchange for some speed. If everyone was throwing all their scanned stuff in a bag immediately, the checkout would be a lot faster.

[FourOnTheFloor]

OK, I will admit the "unexpected item" nonsense has diminished... only to be replaced by the "calling for assistance" out of nowhere.