Self Check

Wes and I are generally a fan of the self-check aisles at places like grocery stores or Target. The challenge is always to do a perfect scan with no errors. Part of me thinks these stores put in these self-check aisles as an "in your face" to people who gripe about how bad cashiers are (and they are compared to the ones in Germany; I've always been convinced that the Germans were less crabby because they got to sit down and never had to bag), although I know it's purely economic since the store doesn't need cashiers to man them.

Today Wes and I went to the new Home Depot that just opened down the street on Roosevelt and Canal. We are putting up a shelf to hold the DVD player and such so as to free up use of the table that sits in that nook next to the fireplace. We couldn't find what we wanted pre-made (and both agreed that whole nook would be more useful with a built-in desk and shelves), so Wes the handyman said he would build it -- the shelf, not a full built-in. We got a nice piece of cedar with some trim, screws, stain, and the lot. We had our wood cut and headed for the checkout. We were bit surprised to find how limited our options were -- the "pro" line (not us) and the self-checkout. It just seemed odd to us to have a self-checkout at a place like Home Depot, where people buy things like table saws and plywood (like the gentlemen behind us) and bags of concrete. Not easy things to swipe over a scanner. Since there were no "amateur" lines (for those of us who have retained that status for the purposes of the Olympics), self-checkout was the only option.

Of course, Wes and I tend to feel at home in these settings. My sister Laura always likes to point out the many "Self Park" places in Chicago when she visits. I don't know why is amuses her so.

The self-check experience started bumpy when the elderly man in front of us kept looking for a receipt to sign. The cashier for the cashierless self-check had to explain to him that he didn't need to sign anything. Upon getting started, she scanned our shelf wood and asked how long it was. Wes told her 67". She told the uber-cashier in command of the cashierless checkout stations that it was 7". That raised some eyebrows, naturally. Wes tried again and said 70". She told Mr. Uber-Cashier 7'. By this point Wes converted for her and said 5 1/2'. She gave up on us and took the board to measure herself. We then made it through the trim and screws and such and got to a little keyhold saw Wes picked up for extra cuts on the trim. When we scanned it, the station locked up and said, "Check ID." So the cashier manning our cashierless station checked Wes's driver's license. Strangely enough, the station did not unlock. We mused the likelihood that any item at Home Depot would have an age restriction, much less a five-inch saw.

Around this time, the cashier at our cashierless station realized that the man at the register ahead of us had not finished his checkout (his screen was left on the payment stage), and he had left with his items. This confused people for about five minutes. Ten or more employees circled the area to no avail. No new checkout lanes were opened, no one found the man who had absconded quietly with his items, and our station was still locked. Finally a manager came over and used her ID to unlock the station. We scanned our final item and paid. We realized eventually that we had not been charged for the saw ($4), but we had been charged $12 for a pack of sandpaper. The uber-cashier manning the self-check area rescanned the item to confirm that it really was $12, and we left confident that the price of the sandpaper more than made up for the lack of the saw.

I'm not saying I wouldn't go back to that Home Depot again. In fact, I wish it had opened earlier. I only hope that the store recruits some of the tellers from the new Bank of America branch a block away. We went in to change out some money into one-dollar bills, and we had five employees, including a very ebullient branch manager, at our disposal.