I’ve worked in a supermarket for most of my adulthood. I can confirm that nobody likes the self checkouts. Least of all the staff. We’re supposed to be in eight places at once, monitoring for compliance, preventing shrinkage, helping with the exceptions. But the people using the checkouts haven’t been trained to, they’re customers, they don’t know what they’re doing, so they’re going to compound it by making mistakes too.
When I started out, you had to be specifically till-trained to operate a checkout. Now they throw people on self checkout duty with no training and say “figure it out”. Customers hate it. We hate it. Store management had the bright idea of putting someone on “receipt checking” duty which went down about as well as you’d expect.
I said just put them on a till.
They laughed and said I “don’t get it”.
What is it?!
Neurodivergent people love them. Or at least some of us do.
Going to the store with my wife is one thing, and it’s mostly fine. If I gotta go by myself, my AirPods are in, I’m probably listening to Enya, and I’m definitely going for self-checkout if I have the option. I’m tech savvy and I have worked retail (not grocery, specifically) and I’m pretty damn good at bagging. I’m sure I look like I know what I’m doing. If I need help, I can usually wave someone over and they’ll get it figured out and it’s not that bad. But I’m not there to make small talk, I’m there to get my shit and leave. I know I also have to bag it and pay for it, I have no interest in shoplifting or cheating the store, but self-checkout offers a lot less friction than going through a line. (Hell, when I/we do go through a line, I want to bag, because I can do it better, and I like stores that don’t have baggers. Because usually they have a longer conveyor belt and I’m not right in front of the cashier. I’m just doing my own thing.