I don't know that I'm that optimistic -- though EWR found a new kind of stupid: I stopped by the 1K check-in just to get my BP (it was a same day trip so no bag to check) and besides the kiosk only registering about 1 in every 6 touches when it finally printed the boarding pass (after sending me a pointless text message, of course) -- it printed on the back side of the counter and I had to wait for one of the UGE (UGX?) reps to hand it to me... I don't mind the human touch (I prefer when an agent handles check-in end-to-end...feels more civilized) but it seemed like a "Can we make this process any stupider or more convoluted?" moment.

Like if an employee is going to have to be involved in the transaction anyway, why can't they just handle all of the steps of printing the boarding pass?