Self torture machines

I got really excited when stores like Superstore, WalMart and Zeller's put self serve checkouts in. Colour me strange, but I like self serve and was looking forward to using these checkouts whenever the opportunity presented itself. What a freaking disappointment! They rarely work properly! A partial list of what can go wrong:

• Item can't / doesn't scan - you're totally screwed in this case until a helper comes along and even then you might still be screwed if they don't know what to do.
• Price is not what you saw marked on the shelf - ditto.......... screwed.... or eat the cost difference.
• Item doesn't weigh what it should - if the computer's idea of what the item should weigh differs from its actual weight - you're going to get a hard time when you put it in the bag on the weigh scale.
• Item doesn't fit in the bag - if the system doesn't allow for 'skipping bagging' for large items, you're not going to get past that item until you cram that mother into the bag - totally useless.
• When you get to paying for the order, the money input and output slots don't seem organized in a way that makes finding them intuitive - the coins, bills and receipts often don't come out anywhere near each other.
• Machine is stuck in mid-transaction from the last customer who gave up and walked away.
• Machine is just out of order, period.
• God help you if each self checkout is being used by any one of the following: technically illiterate person who can't even operate a bank machine or cell phone; technophobic who acts like the checkout machine is possessed or trying to cheat them; a lone parent accompanied by 3 or more children; anyone who should know in advance that they have too many items.

If it ends up taking 4 times as long to process a 6 item order through a self checkout than using a human operated till, that says ineffective use of technology to me...........