Check Yourself. Experience Necessary.

Today I find myself thinking of the wide world of shopping. More specifically, the checkout line.

I have become a HUGE fan of the self checkout line. There is nothing more annoying to me than sitting in a checkout line with 5 things to purchase and having to wait behind somebody who looks like they're stocking up for the winter.

I'd like to shake the hand of the person that came up with this concept. There are too many stores that cut back on cashiers to save money and in turn make us waste our time in their lines. The most heinous of these in my opinion is Costco. Now don't get me wrong I mostly love Costco, but it drives me crazy when I need one or two items and they only have 4 of their 20 lanes open.

There is a wholesale club in New England by the name of B.J.'s. Very comparable to Costco, but I'll give the edge to B.J.'s. This was the first place I had ever seen the self checkout line. I marveled and the ingenuity as I finally got to whiz past the people buying 18 cases of water, 32 cases of pop (I will NEVER call it soda, sorry honey) and 10 boxes of granola bars. My prayers were answered.

Now they're popping up everywhere: Kroger, Meijer, Ikea, Home Depot, Lowes. Still no Costco though. Why? If you're going to have all those lanes closed at least make some use out of the space.

In all my shopping I have seen only one bad thing about the self checkout line, the inexperienced user. You know them. They're the ones who don't own computers because they don't know how to turn them on. Why then are they using a self checkout?