There’s nothing worse than walking into a store, maneuvering your way through all of the people to find what you need, and then walking up to check out and seeing the line is half way down the store.

I know patience is a virtue and not something we all have, but sometimes it’s frustrating when our time waiting to pay for our items is more than our time spent in the actual store shopping for what we need. A lot of stores now have added many self-checkout lanes so that you can do it yourself. I feel like it’s both good and bad.

Let me explain. It’s good because it opens more lanes for people to go up, scan their few items, and move on with their day. It’s bad because it’s taken jobs away from people, it’s given stores a reason to un-man their registers with actual people (why? I’ll never understand) and it gives the opportunity for inconsiderate people to walk up to the self-checkout lane with two full carts of groceries and then tell the employee watching over them that they actually don’t want half the cart anymore and to void half the items.

One store that I have noticed that has a huge lack of employees manning the registers and relies a lot on self-checkout is Target. Those lines in Target can get LONG. Will it stop me from going there? No, because I love Target. But I feel like they have an issue with their checkout process.

Lucky for us, Target just recently announced that they’re enhancing their checkout experience for guests. They listed off a few different things they’re doing to help the checkout experience go a little more smoothly:

• getting express self-checkout for people that have 10 items or less (yay!)
• manning their registers with more people
• giving stores flexibility to open more self-checkout / manned registers for busier store hours

I think this will help out all of us regulars a lot. Hopefully now we won’t have to wait for Susie with her two carts full at self-checkout when I just need to pay for my laundry detergent and move on with my day.

Thanks, Target. I’ll be there a few more times this week for Target Circle Week.