In rec.crafts.metalworking George wrote:
"jw" wrote:

Whatever happened to the test McDonalds in Colorado(Denver I think)
that had no active employees? There was a "manager" that loaded all of
the machines in the morning. The customer selected what they wanted
from a touch panel and after swiping a credit card, out it popped at
the other end. This was probably 5 years ago. Obviously didn't take
off in a huge way, but it seemed like an interesting experiment.

I imagine most of it was a "social" problem and not a techinical one
that it has not taken off.

Seems like all the Home Depot's and all the grocery stores around here
have installed do-it-yourself checkout machines.

They first started appearing about a year ago. At first, they just
stood there, not many people used them. Now they are getting a fair
amount of traffic, though it is still not as much as the human being
manned checkout lanes.

Look for a glut of unemployed cashiers in the next couple of years.

Those scanners are junk. I had issues at with stuff being scanned once and me being charged twice.

I refuse to use them anywhere now and just bang on them until an employee comes over and ask them to do it. They scan way slower even for employees than a real checkout line. I don't get union benefits like grocery store employees,so I refuse to use any scanning equipment anyways.