Retailers are pulling back from self-checkout after years of theft, errors, and questionable time savings

I think this weird anti-self-checkout crowd is just young people who don’t remember the times before self-checkouts. Even if every checkout was manned it was still completely normal to wait upwards of ten minutes, even when it wasn’t that busy. I remember my Mum excitedly running to a checkout because there was only one person queueing there. Nowadays I totally expect there to be no queue at all and I feel hard done by if I have to queue for more than one minute.

Um, no. There are many other categories of people who have issues with self-checkouts. Like anyone who’s legally or by the store’s rules due a discount or tax waiver (people with Indigenous status aren’t required to pay sales taxes in some jurisdictions, for instance), since the software often fails to account for these. Anyone paying cash. Anyone who knows anything at all about UI design or has wrestled with a self-checkout that just doesn’t function properly.

I’ll wait in line rather than deal with a machine that’s broken by design, thanks. Fortunately, the stores around here mostly have reasonable staffing practices, so the wait isn’t long unless some idiot tries to price-match against a flyer or something else weird and unusual.