I agree. And some of the people who don’t get it are going to insist on using them anyway.
I have used this technology at a local grocery store where it works well for me if I only have a few prepackaged items and I can pay with a card. I never use them if I have produce or something that needs to be weighed like a salad from their salad bar mostly for reasons such as kittenblue cites. (Note to self…look into feasibility of genetically engineering fruits and vegetables so a bar code will appear on the skin). If there is some particular employee who is supposed to be monitoring people using these things I haven’t seen him/her.
A local Home Depot has had them for about a year and I refuse to use them. The barely tolerable wait to check out there has become unbearable because of them. I actually put my stuff down and walked out the last time. I think it is because HD sells so many items that come in different weights or lengths or diameters. They can’t barcode every single screw and nail in the store, so it demands too much knowledge from their customers to key in a code or a weight or something. They seem to have an employee assigned to the self check out lanes, but it doesn’t help much. There is another Home Depot no further away than the first that doesn’t have them so I shop there now, and I am much happier.
Oh, and Diceman is right. They are not intended to save you time, their purpose is to save the store money, pure and simple.