All Patricia Greig wants is a human being to help her and her luggage get safely and sanely to their destination.
I would rather be greeted by a row of Daleks than face the menace of an airport foyer filled with self check-in kiosks. I'm not sure who thought it was a good idea to leave them lying around in Auckland Airport's international terminal. Judging by the way they are set up in diagonal rows, supposedly functional, leaving just enough space for a bag and half of a small human, their existence is definitely no accident.
No longer relegated to common buffet tables and ATMs, self service has spread over recent years. For whatever reason - most likely to do with cost, efficiency and the rapid decline of poetry in an inhumane universe - some airlines have decided that replacing free-thinking capable humans with tiny boxes that have no voices is the way of the future. These boxes can't check in bags, most have trouble reading passports and sometimes don't even turn on, leaving 20 people at once trying to ask the one attendant, who does have a face, for advice. There are no lines to wait for these attendants, and they don't have desks, so you'll have little luck tracking one down (so they can access their system with the same information you fed the machine) in less than five minutes.
It's not simply that the self check-in kiosks exist, it's that they aren't that helpful. A close friend recently took a trip from Auckland to Koh Samui with a stop in Kuala Lumpur, and found Air New Zealand's self check-in kiosks would not allow her to forward her bags from KUL to USM, and organising it herself was a feat she hadn't planned on achieving during a two-hour stopover.
As far as efficiency goes, lines are unavoidable. This usually takes place in an area that fails to allow for a horde of travellers - although if the process was as quick as it's supposed to be I'm sure the system would work. Often, passengers travelling in groups have the smarts - or the gall - to have someone wait in the bag-drop line while the rest of their party checks in. Congratulations to one of you for being intelligent enough to work the machine, but your mate is at the front of the queue letting people drip feed to the counter in front, saving your place and mucking up the rest of the line. Unless playing leapfrog over strangers' luggage while you wait for an available machine/attendant is something you're interested in, it's impossible to stay calm and organised ahead of your flight.
