I’ll field this one:
No.
Jeff, not so wild a coincidence - the incident I describe happened at a Home Depot! I have witnessed something similar happening to someone else at a K-Mart, though. I haven’t bothered using the self-check lanes at K-Mart, though, as they’re getting so little business that the regular checkouts are usually empty.
K-Mart and Home Depot do use the same self-checkout systems - from NCR.
Wow, thanks for the link ladyfoxfyre, it’s even more twisted to know that was based on a real guy. I can’t believe I’d never heard of him before, he sounds like he should be on the list of most sick and twisted murderers in history.
It’s not just a K-Mart problem, I’m afraid. I once got stopped leaving a Sears store once for “shoplifting” the jacket I was wearing, because it was just like one they sold. They didn’t seem to care much when I pointed out that I already knew they sold jackets just like that because, whaddayaknow, I had bought mine in that very store about two weeks prior. They wasted a couple of hours of my time, until someone (me) had the brilliant idea that perhaps they could look up the purchase in their computer since it had been made with a credit card. The security people continued to be assholes throughout, but the store manager got a lot more cooperative when I asked to use the phone to call home and instead called the family friend who did the ‘consumer advocate’ segment on the local news. They eventually reversed the charge on the jacket by way of apology.
As Dragonblink said, “No.” Management often aren’t around, (though, management at my store, on the whole, aren’t too bad. They’ll quite often work customer assistance when it gets busy. )
But basically, management can’t do shit. If they’re told by head office that they’ve got a certain amount of money to pay staff wages, they can’t put on any more staff, no matter how much they’d like to. And I can guarantee that head office won’t see customers playing with staff-only equipment. And if they somehow heard about it, I doubt they’d care. They’re not the ones having to deal with it.
I’ll say it again. These people are adults. Customer Service isn’t a right. It’s certainly a good business policy for a store to maintain good customer service, but you don’t have any right to it.
You don’t like the service, you go elsewhere. Vote with your wallet. Don’t throw a tantrum.
Lucky you 
Now, it seems that not only do you have difficulty behaving like a reasonable adult out in public, you also have difficulties with your comprehension. Let’s have a good look at what I said.
My not caring was obviously, given the context, conditional. It showed that in my opinion, there is no excuse (this was where the ‘don’t care’ came in) to behave the way you did. Understand?
Nothing makes my job easier than when I have the opportunity to care about the customer. I fulfill their need quickly, they get out of the store, I’m happy, they’re happy… I would love it if I had the time to give attention to every customer. My shift would fly by.
And let me guarantee this. We don’t keep customers waiting on purpose. If you’re waiting, it’s because I’m helping someone else, usually someone who has been waiting just as long as you.
And finally, yes, take my advice. Don’t spend money at the store. The guys in charge look at the bottom line. There’s no difference to them whether you had to wait half an hour for service if you ended up spending the same amount of money anyway. But playing around with equipment for staff use is just incoveniencing people who didn’t create the problem.