I thought of a simple solution to self-service till woes the other day.
A one-minute time limit. As soon as you scan your first item, a clock starts ticking onscreen. You then have 60 seconds to scan the rest of your shopping. When the time runs out, the scanner shuts off and you pay for whatever you managed to scan. This would not only add a bit of Generation Game-style excitement to your shopping trip, but would also banish the problem of standing in a 6-deep queue watching your lunchbreak ebb away as a thicko tries for ten minutes to find 'Apple Tango' in the list of fruit onscreen. It would also put an end to those days of standing in line, clutching a lone bag of Tangfastics as the couple in front put through a month's worth of shopping.

For added fun, a trapdoor could open up which swallows all the stuff you didn't get time to scan (thus discouraging anyone from putting it through in two lots). Oh, and another trapdoor could open up which swallows shoppers who attempt to pay by emptying a jam-jar of pennies, centimes and buttons into the coinslot.
(costas, Thu 7 Apr 2011, 11:54, 3 replies)

You seem to have accidentally highlighted a far bigger problem here.
You're wasting your lunch buying shit from a supermarket. Your life is ebbing inexorably away and the best thing you can think of to do with your all-too-brief midday break is to buy shit from a supermarket. If I were you, I'd be less concerned with the technical ineptness of others and more concerned with the futility of your own existence.
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Thu 7 Apr 2011, 12:05, closed)

That depends
My lunch options are McDonalds or Morrisons. With the myriad other offices, furniture shops, electrical shops, and Toys R Us around here, McDonalds isn't even a contender - it's Morrisons or nothing.
(bblgoose, Thu 7 Apr 2011, 12:12, closed)

Make butties. Feed the pigeons. Feed a bag lady. Take up roller skating. Feed a roller skater.
Morrisons is not the only thing on your horizon. More reasons more reasons more reasons more reasons to avoid spending your free time at morreessons.
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Thu 7 Apr 2011, 12:21, closed)

I do make sandwiches sometimes
but I'm lazy, so often can't be arsed. Besides which, my lunch, although written in my contract as half an hour, actually lasts as long as it takes me to buy food, bring it back to the office, and eat it. Therefore, time in a queue is just time being paid to not work. Kind of like pooing.
(bblgoose, Thu 7 Apr 2011, 13:08, closed)

nooooo, the ones in tescos (maybe other places too) have chutes
they're great if you've been sent out on a booze run and everyone has given you shrapnel. Just empty your pockets in and it counts it all up for you. Lovely.
( kappynitty doubled your entendre on, Thu 7 Apr 2011, 12:30, closed)

No. When the timer reaches zero
the disguised trapdoor upon which your basket was placed opens up and removes all the unscanned groceries.
( Tab Hunter Make this useless process end and so, begin again, Thu 7 Apr 2011, 12:53, closed)