The place the self-check bothers me is in our local small grocery store. I go there because it’s a friendly full-service store. If I wanted to bag my own groceries, weigh my own vegetables, load my own cart, and write little codes on the bakery goods bags, I’d go to the big, impersonal, cut-rate, no-service store in the next town.
They are good for when you are buying one or two simple things. Any more than that, forget it. Plus, at least one of the four self checkouts is broken at any given time, and the store uses it as an excuse to not put enough people on the regular checkouts.
I only buy items on extreme sales at the store with the self checkouts - I go to my Safeway with real people for anything else. They almost always have enough checkers, and though they don’t have rules about opening new registers, they use common sense.
Want to hear another peeve? That’s the able-bodied person who thinks she is too good to bag her own groceries when there is no bagger. I know it’s not a requirement, but when I go, as soon as I run my card through the machine, I start filling bags so that when we’re done, we’re done. Saves time for everyone.
The answer is:
Scan your first item. Place item and bag simultaneously on the “bagging station.” This will eliminate the weight problem, because the computer will accept the bag as part of the item.
You’re welcome. 
I’ll try that the next time I go shopping, Sister Coyote. I never thought of that, because for some reason I was thinking that the system was sophisticated enough to know the weight of the item I had just scanned, and would assume that I had tried to put an item on the scale that I hadn’t scanned.
And thanks.
At some places the only lane you can buy cigarettes on is the express lane. If it makes sense, it’s not allowed.
First unsuccessful try at scanning the banana, “Oook”.
Second attempt, “Oook!”
Third attempt <loud sounds of metal tearing, plastic snapping, glass shattering, and people screaming>.
Moral: Never keep a Librarian from his banana.
do you have similar problems with queue jumpers? why aren’t more dopers angry at the store for allowing it to happen in the first place? it’s good business sense. if you don’t make it easier for people to pay you, less* people do.
- heh
PS. visible smell rays rockle? >.<’
Damn. Forgive me for expecting a minimum of service. I supposed that since I am able-bodied, I should bus my own tables at a restaurant and wash my own dishes as well?
How about at Jiffy Lube?
“Since your manager didn’t schedule enough help today, let me crawl down there and loosen the drain plug for you…”
I’ve always done it because it gets me out of there faster, I can load the bags so I that I can lift them, and I rarely, if ever put all the cans in with the bread and eggs.
Oh yes, especially if my husband was on dinner duty the night before. Mango + corn + fudge + cheese doodles = GOD-FRIKKIN-AWFUL. They neglected to tell us this in our adoptive parenting classees.
Doesn’t work at my local Loblaws. Turns out there’s an actual button on the screen that allows you to place your bags on the thingy without it yelling at you.
I’d never pressed it because it’s worded in such a way that it made me thought it was for buying bags, not putting ones you already own on the thingy.
I know better now.
Depends on their urinary health I think.
I would have thought so, too, but a cashier helped me out by explaining that “the lady”* didn’t understand about canvas bags, and thus the combination was needed.
Of course, she told me this when I was buying a $.99 canvas bag, but whatever works.
Dante - maybe it’s a regional thing. It works at Safeways, Raleys, and ShopMart (used to be Albertsons) here (almost on the left coast).
*Not the poster the Lady.