With my job I tend to fly a lot, and I must say one of the coolest things Virgin Blue did is bring in the self service kiosks. Walk into airport, see the HUGE queue but a whole lot of empty kiosks. Since I travel without baggage, I can spend a couple of minutes checking in and done! I think the extra benefit is that those 2 minutes I'm engaged in doing something. Even if waiting in line for a couple of minutes, I'm shuffling along with nothing to do but wait for OTHER people.
People don't like waiting. You see this whenever someone takes a side street to avoid waiting at traffic lights. In my experience, the travel time often ends up longer avoiding the traffic lights, but knowing this I'm still a sucker for taking alternate routes to avoid waiting.
Getting side tracked with analogies on my analogies here :) I didn't actually try the self checkout the other day, but I will next time I'm in. There are friendly staff around there helping people so good time to try it out with the training wheels on. Just think how great this will be when you dash in during quiet times to buy a loaf of bread, and don't have to wait at the only open checking behind the lady doing her weekly shop!
