> You should do that anyway to help out the cashier. It's common courtesy.

O_O

To be honest, I've never done that, and I'm surprised that It's common courtesy. I don't think I've ever been in a situation where I had a chance to help the cashier to find the barcode. What I do myself is placing items on the conveyor belt, putting items into the bags after checkout. Was I being impolite? What's the cashier's job then? Pressing the scan button...?

It might be courtesy, but it's certainly not "common." Times like these are where I feel like half of HN must be from a totally different planet. Searching out barcodes is fun and common? What?

In my country there are signs in every store at the conveyor belt saying "turn the bar code toward you", i.e. so that the it lines up with the scanner.