If you travel frequently, you already know that fewer humans are involved in the process these days. As a cost-cutting measure, airlines are using self-service boarding pass kiosks rather than real, live gate agents. If you haven't seen these things yet, they're similar to Automatic Tellers: You insert some type of identification with a magnetic stripe (such as a credit card), and answer a series of questions that usually leads to the issuance of your boarding pass.

The trouble with these self-service kiosks is that the "public" is expected to use them. We're talking about the same "public" that drives in the passing lane at 30 miles-per-hour with its left turn signal on. We're talking about the same "public" that waits for a supermarket cashier to announce a total before fishing-around in its purse to find a checkbook.

So just try and use one of these ticketing kiosks: I dare you.

Share with me, please, a few of my recent experiences:

• At Washington National Airport, three machines were simultaneously blocked by a woman skier, who propped her skis against one machine, stacked a few hundred pounds of luggage in front of another, and screamed obscenities at a third. An America West employee watched all of this with a visage of abject boredom, his cheek propped on his palm. We (waiting passengers) couldn't use the machines, and the only available human wasn't helping. This was a long, frustrating wait.

• In Kansas City, where Northwest Airlines absolutely insisted that we use the machines, I waited for almost 20 minutes behind a gentleman who barely spoke English. At one point, he tried violently shoving his wadded-up flight itinerary into the machine. Later, he inexplicably decided that rooting-around for things in his carry-on bag would speed-up the process. It didn't.

• In Las Vegas, the mute machine and Northwest's oddball marketing tactics nearly cost me my ride home. Arriving at the airport hurried and harried for a night flight, I spent 10 minutes trying to get a Northwest ticketing machine to own-up to the fact that I already had reservations. The kiosk knew nothing of me. The kiosk knew nothing of my travel plans. I had to beg a human being to answer a question (a clear rule violation, but necessary). As it turned out, Northwest had sold me a ticket on Continental Airlines, but nothing on my paperwork indicated this. I had to make a mad dash through the airport to get through the line at the Continental ticketing kiosk and start the process all over. I made my flight, but barely. If a human had been available earlier in the process (or Northwest had indicated that they had put me on Continental), it would have saved loads of time and stress.

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