The retail industry strives to sell products at the cheapest price it can while at the same time making money. One of the trends that I have noticed in retail stores during the past few years is the addition of self-checkout lines.

Originally self-checkout machines were only in the express lanes, but have since expanded into the regular lanes. These machines allow one cashier to operate multiple lanes at one time, thus saving the business personal hours. They also allow consumers to bag their order the way they want to.

This may seem like a win-win for the business and consumers, but there are some drawbacks, particularly with the machines that do not have an item limit.

The item limit registers force consumers to bag each item after it is scanned. The lack of no item limit machines puts the shopper’s order into a holding area.

This makes the no limit registers unfriendly to solo shoppers because the shopper is not able to bag his or her order until the items are paid for. This causes the line to be held up and consumers in the back of the line to be frustrated at the longer wait versus what they would have had if the lane was not a self-checkout one.

I did not fully realize this until recent trips to the store when I used a self-checkout machine. The first one occurred during the busiest shopping weekend of the year (the weekend before Christmas). On that day, I waited a long time to check out. When it was my turn, the person behind me asked if she could bag my items. I could tell she was tired of waiting, so since the person in front of me was also a solo shopper, I let her bag my order.

The other time occurred last week when I went grocery shopping. Since the check out lines were not busy, I decided to use a self-checkout, but people started getting in line behind me when I was scanning my groceries.

After I paid for my groceries, I began bagging them as quickly as I could. While I was bagging my groceries, the people behind me started scanning their groceries. Because I put a divider separating orders, they could only scan some of them as they quickly filled the small area. They seemed frustrated at the store for having self-checkout machines.

Stores that use self-checkout registers should have one person at the computer and one person bagging people’s orders, especially those of solo shoppers. That way the people can get through the lines quickly.

Because of these experiences, this has caused me to reconsider using these registers when shopping by myself. For now, I have decided to look and see if the cashier is helping bag groceries when he or she does not have to verify the shopper’s item. If the cashier is, I will use the self-checkout, if not I will try to find a regular checkout lane that is not very long.