] It's Keith Lichtman's second trip to the Home Depot in
] Long Island City. He's redoing his kitchen and bathroom
] and needed to buy bathroom tiles and accessories.
]
] He's a self-checkout neophyte who didn't want to suffer
] through the long wait at the regular checkout for just a
] handful of items. In five minutes Lichtman had paid for
] all his purchases and was walking away with bag in hand.

Are you f-ing kidding me?! I've tried to use the self-checkout at Home Depot. Actually I tried it twice. I will never do it again. The first time, one of the things I attempted to purchase was a flowerpot. The scanny tag was on the inside rim of the pot. Couldn't scan it. They also don't have a handheld scanny thing. So I was pretty pissed off and frustrated, and it took forever for the cashier or whatever to come over and help me. They did not have an option for typing in the UPC. The second time I went to use the Home Depot self-checkout, one of the things I was purchasing were plastic screws in little plastic baggies. They scanned fine. The problem came when I went to put my screws in the shopping bag. They have these things sense when you put something in the bag... Apparently it senses it by weight. The plastic screws weighed practically nothing, so I'm standing there like an asshole while the machine is screaming "PLEASE PUT YOUR PURCHASE IN THE BAG" and it's not letting me continue scanning things, until I put my screws in the bag. I tried throwing them in the bag REALLY hard, but that didn't fool the machine either. Eventually (after hearing me curse out the f-ing machine several times) someone came over and helped me. I will never use the self-checkout at Home Depot again, even though the regular lines are out of control there.
At Stop-n-Shop, however, I LOVE the self-checkout. It has sensors that see your items on the belt, so you don't have to bag your items right away. Self-checkout there is fun when both of us go, but it sometimes sucks if it's just me, and I buy a lot of stuff, because the bagging area gets full and I have to stop scanning and run down there and bag. But I like that self-checkout. It's fun.