Dear Automated Checkout Attendant:

Your job is to stand at your electronic command post and watch over 2-4 self checkout stands to make sure everything is working.

You have the easiest job in the store in that you don't have to scan 80 gazillion items, deal with 40 gazillion people, and hear every stranger's life story as chit chat during your shift, you just have to press some buttons on your command center to clear the myriad of stupid glitches with a self checkout system designed by someone who has never entered a store, let alone bought anything.

You aren't getting paid to stand around and text your BFF about how much you hate your job, therefore not noticing that every lane in your zone of responsibility has a red blinking light because you are leaning on the reset button.

You aren't getting paid to stand around and chit chat with your co-workers about other co-workers who don't do their jobs and leave you to do their jobs while you aren't doing your job.

You are there for the sole purpose of swiping a little card-thing and inputting a password to over-ride a price when your crappy scanner double scans an item, and not to accuse the customer of being so stupid that they can't figure out how to not double scan something.

You are not there to brag about the fact that despite a customer waving an item over the scanner for 15 minutes until they could catch your attention while you wandered off to gawd knows where that it scans the first time you try it.

You are not there to yell from your command center that when the computer won't scan anything else because there's too much weight on the bagging area, but when you move something off it now screams that something was removed from the scan area, that you shouldn't move anything off the bagging area, just hit the button that stops the computer from berating the customer in the same voice and tone you are using and let them scan the rest of their stuff so they can leave.

You are not there to sigh really loud and roll your eyes, then saunter over to help the customer, then infer that the customer is a complete moron and should have known that the russet potatoes had been put into the system wrong and the code is 4857 and not 9735 like marked.


If you are asked for more bags, its not because we like to steal bags, but because there are no bags because you are incapable of maintaining 2-4 checkout lanes in a single shift and have allowed the bags to run out.  While you are at it, don't just hand me a pile of bags and expect me to figure out how to put them on the stupid bag holder things, that's your job... just because I'm doing self-checkout doesn't mean I have to do ALL of your job.

Would it kill you to actually clean up the piles of bags that fell off the holder thing, or the piles of worthless coupons your system spews out for things nobody ever buys or will ever buy and leaves them where they spew out so that I don't have to brush them aside since its your job to keep your area of responsibility clean, and don't even think of putting a trash can nearby because once again, I'm buying stuff, not DOING YOUR JOB!

Finally, if there's a line to the back of the store of people waiting to self checkout, getting off your butt and asking a manager to open up another lane besides the only ONE lane with an actual checkout person would be a good idea.