The weight sensor is what drives me nuts. - Bought a light item and the weight sensor didn't detect it? Wait for attendant. - Scanning too quickly since you want to be out of there within the next hour and there is a line building up? Wait for attendant. - Moved a bag off the weight sensor because you need more than two bags to fit your stuff in? Wait for attendant. - Scanned an item and put it back in your cart because it makes no sense to put that large of an item on the tiny bagging area? Hit "I don't want to bag this item" and wait for attendant. - You seem to be triggering "wait for attendant" too much, so wait for attendant to put in a passcode to tell the system that you are doing everything right.
And I use my backpack because I generally ride a bicycle to the store. And the weight sensor won't tare anything that ways over 200g. Which means I have to put everything not in the backpack and then fill it up afterwards, or else I need to wait for the attendant after every single item, and the attendant is generally off smoking a cigarette. At least you have a passcode. Here? No, fuck you. Every. Fucking. Item.
None of this would be that bad if someone hadn't realized that, during slow periods, they can send everyone home but the one attendant manning the self-checkout lanes, so if you don't notice on your way in you're either using the self-checkout lane, or putting your stuff back on the shelves and coming back later.
I dunno, man. a scale that runs XPSP3 maintained in a retail environment by underpaid, overworked manual laborers and has to interface with coupons, credit cards, cash, checks and EBT is gonna be a bad time just about any way you implement it. Until grocery stores start fielding in-store IT departments those stupid scanners are gonna suck.
The one I interact with is running Red Hat, they could and hopefully did arrange to administer it remotely. I say it wouldn't be that bad so long as there were actual lanes open too because then you can choose your badness; standing in line or dealing with the kiosk. If you just have a couple of things and aren't doing anything unusual like using a backpack, the kiosk might well be better than standing in line. Well, unless it's running XPSP3, which is just irresponsible for a device processing credit cards.