I would say my worst experience with self checkout was at ikea. During a busy time of year, we visited ikea and picked up about $1000 worth of stuff. As you know, $1000 can net you a lot at ikea - so we probably had at least 50-60 items.

We would have been happy to wait in line for a traditional cashier but there were only self checkout lanes. And long lines for those too! We finally get to the front of the line, dutifully scan each item. Of course it’s impossible to track what’s scanned already since the area to place items is no larger than the one at the supermarket. Fat chance putting a shelf on that tiny area.

Anyway, the system decides that due to our purchase volume, we were selected for a “random rescan”. So we wait for someone to come over and it picks three items for the person to scan. Of course they screw it up, and the system now declares the entire order needs to be started from scratch.

How exactly did anyone save time or effort in this case? What a nightmare.