I’m assuming it’s not a novelty elsewhere in the world, but last weekend I did the ’self service checkout’ thing for the first time (buying a book at the new Big W store up in Gungahlin). There was nothing particularly eventful about it, except that the computer seemed to really want me to put my book into a plastic bag (which I didn’t need). I did get a bag in the end for fear of causing trouble, but with everyone else moving to reusable bags, it seemed a little odd. Perhaps I just wasn’t familiar with the proper ‘I don’t need a bag’ procedure, but given that the self service checkout thing is pretty new around here, I don’t imagine anyone will be.

Anyway, other than that it worked well, and saved me some queuing. Other people around the place don’t seem to have had any trouble with them either.

I’ve no idea if it’s true, but I remember reading once that instead of barcodes, someone once considered making supermarket items radioactive so that they would give off a level or radiation in proportion to their value. In spite of the (nowadays) obvious dangers, presumably you could then somehow detect the value of everything in a trolley in one hit, which would be pretty cool.