frustrating experience at the u-scan-it auto-till checkout thingy #2
I was at Weis grocery store, going through the u-scan thingy again with just a few items. There was no wait, a good sign. I scanned my bottle of soda water and plopped the tall skinny thing on the belt. The belt lurches into action, probably a little too suddenly. while the belt is trying to pull the item through the plexiglass tunnel, the bottle topples over and starts rolling. The sensors in the plexi tunnel sense that there’s only one item, but they can’t get it to transfer to the second belt to be conveyed to the bagging area. Usually, in this case they try to kick the thingy back for rescanning, but the bottle is sitting in the “V” junction spinning between the two belts being variously jiggled back and forth. The anti-shoplifting plexi tunnel of shrinkage prevention is looking mighty frustrated for a smart terminal, and it finally gives up and starts flashing the red strobe.
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You can guess the outcome, when it?s busy, you can?t get any help at the robo-scanner, when it’s slow, except there’s three people in line at the only real teller, and those three people are buying two weeks worth of food each, and the u-scan-it thingy gets flummoxed over a bottle of seltzer water, you can’t get any help either. That big flashing strobe might make you think that at that very instant, in the secret manager’s bat cave, there’s a red phone flashing to get the manager’s attention, but that’s a false hope. One minute, two minutes, two and a half minutes and I leave my purchases there on the belt and scattered in the cart.
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