I, too, met with the leaping Zone R dragon the other day, though I had already printed my own boarding pass. One solitary, lonely agent was staffing the "fast bag drop" - which is so strange as with a queue there was nothing fast about it! The dragon then started hassling an elderly couple flying to Jo'burg in F - not a premium experience for them at all.
On my return to London, I was assaulted by three BA staff members trying to get me to use ck-in machines in LIS, and there were three desks open, none of them Club or Exec Club Gold/Silver or Bag Drop. When I told them I had checked in but didn't have a boarding pass (it wouldn't print in the hotel), they let me proceed to the desk. Their gregariousness for getting staff to use the machines was strange...are they incentivised in some way, or perhaps penalised? Or don't they think that the more people become habituated to using the machines, the faster BA will get rid of the human element and these people will be looking for jobs elsewhere!
The good news for the trip was two-fold: 1-crew LIS-LHR in CE were superb! All chairside service from the galley (six rows of Club) - no carts - drinks & trays brought individually. Nice touch. 2-that IRIS worked a treat in T1 (landed behind a couple of 767s, Narita & LAX 747s so queues were long, and bags took less than 30 mins from landing to get to the belt...out of the airport 38 mins after touchdown...not bad!