[mattmanser]

In England we have a lot of self-serve counters with scanners built in. Is that not something Americans have yet?

Anyway, it doesn't 'just work'. Often you stand there like a lemon trying to scan again and again. You can pick out the people who've barely used them as they always take an age to scan everything.

And each major supermarket has their own version of these things and they're all equally as cumbersome to use, so I think barcode scanning gets easy with practice but it definitely doesn't 'just work'.

[jonknee]

Lemons are a good example of something that works poorly for self checkout. They are small and round which is hard to have a barcode label displayed on. They're worried about weight and that you aren't stealing. It's often much easier to scan a barcode when you're holding the scanner and not the object.

Though in this case, you could also just say "lemons" and be done with it.

[mattmanser]

Like a lemon's an idiom, sorry! I just meant that it takes a while to get good at scanning.