I likewise checked a bag yesterday for the first time in a good while. I keep a separate wardrobe, etc, here on the East Coast but I took everything home over the holiday break, so I had to lug it all back out again yesterday. My bag was just shy of an hour to come out @ BWI. Bags were still feeding out individually, about one every 30 seconds to a minute apart when I finally got mine and left to go get the rental. There will still plenty of others milling about and chatting nervously amongst one another about their valuables. I have no idea if the baggage handlers were just sticking to some union quota of no more than n number of bags per hour or if they were rummaging through as many as they could in real time or what?

To make matters worse, my connection in DEN had been very short due to an unavailable gate upon arrival (sat for about 20 minutes waiting for that to clear - AGAIN). Thus, I popped into the baggage claim office on arrival to see if it had even arrived with me (was secretly hoping that they'd have to deliver it to my hotel instead of my having to stand around waiting endlessly to claim it myself). Before I could even finish politely explaining my inquiry, the lady behind the desk cut me off with an extremely cross look (literally bobbling her head) and "I'M BUSY DOING SOMETHING ELSE HERE - GO OUT AND USE THE MACHINE!!"

On the upside, I learned that there was, in fact, a chicken-looking station that could tell me where my bag was last scanned by manually entering the claim check number. Who knew?