Sunday, August 03, 2008

"Please return item to the bagging area"

Arghhh!  Who designed the self-check-out machines that have proliferated of late?

Regardless of the store, the self-checkout machines have exactly the same design so somebody, somewhere, is making a lot of money selling them.

I can only assume the manufacturer has a rock-solid patent that is keeping rivals from competing and protects their sordid little monopoly. How else could they get away with failing to fix gaping defects in the user interface that have persisted since they first appeared several years ago?

"Item removed from bagging area"

... yes. I know. The bag was full.

"Please return item to the bagging area"

... WHY?!!!  WHY SHOULD I?????

"Unexpected item in the bagging area"

... YOU JUST TOLD ME TO!!!!!   I want to cry now :-(

Useless, useless, stupid, stupid machines.

 

I see I'm not the only one who hates them...  (the date on that post also shows that the user interface stupidity has persisted for at least a year.)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I avoid the self checkouts and they still manage to annoy me. There are two next to the real cashiers in my local shop that babble away about their bagging area non-stop. They even got in sync the other day, speaking in some sort of nightmarish union as I tried to avoid looking directly at them.

Richard Brown said...

Arghhh....! Stop it! You're scaring me!!!

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Anonymous said...

Doesn't IBM make these things?

Richard Brown said...

Probably!

Anonymous said...

Just wanted to add that across the pond in Toronto we have the same stupid machines with the same extremely unintuitive grocery checkout process.