I don't like self service checkouts because I don't want people to lose their jobs. But there is one thing I like about them. They are patient and many of them will take mixed payment, let me explain.
Earlier in the month I found a bag of nickel coins and pennies. In the the UK all the coins that are made of Nickel are less than one pound but more than a few pennies. The bag of coins was a nuisance because the whole bag was heavy but has a small value. I took the bag with me to the supermarket and used it to pay some of the balance on my shopping. The shopping was £12 but the bag's value was £8 so I finished the £4 balance with my card. The machine didn't care that I was using many pennies and Nickels to pay the balance, even though I was feeding the coins one at a time through the coin slot.
It is funny that the new pound coin has a nickel center, the old round pounds were all made of a brass alloy from edge to edge.
If I designed the software for self service checkouts it would look very different. It would have digital copy of the receipt scrolling up the screen and it would have hundreds of sound effects for every action. When I was a young man I found this software on my father's computer called lotus organiser when you clicked on different tabs, you would hear exaggerated sounds of paper being ruffled. The colours would be very bright and very clear. The software would also have a face in the top left corner of the screen. The face would represent the status of the machine. If the bar code was not recognised, the face would look confused and there would be the sound effect associated with it. At the end of the transaction the face would grow and fill the screen and say thank you. The face would be chrome and non human so no one would accuse it of being racist.
