Barcodes are not necessarily just for swiping at the grocery checkout counter, they have many more uses. Product pricing is the obvious one that we see just about every day, for example, they are widely used in most retail stores across the globe. Once the barcode labels are passed over the scanner, the cost of that product will be reflected on the computer or cash register. Thus, the need for manually entering the cost is completely eliminated.
How about documentation on the paperwork that has to be returned to official organisations and government departments; barcode labels are usually put on them. These barcode labels can have the time and date information as to when the documents were returned. This eliminates the need for searching through files to determine whether or not the documents have been returned.
Another popular usage is on ID cards most of which have a barcode label on them. This makes it easy to scan them through a swipe machine, they can also be used for recording the employee clocking on and off times.
Airline tickets are also featuring barcodes but event tickets are now using them widely by doing so they can ensure that they are authentic. When people enter any event, tickets can be scanned. This data can also help to tally the total number of people in the building.
These are just a few of the many uses for barcodes and we can see that scanning barcode labels is easy and information can be accessed within minutes.