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

I don’t get why people think they will be more efficient and faster than someone who’s used to pass products all day. Cashiers already know where to look for the barcodes and remember the codes for vegetables without having to look anywhere. Self-checkout is only faster in the beginning because few people use it. When it becomes the only option, prepare for even longer queues with people passing the products in such calmness as if they’re doing it in purpose

It wasn’t about the cashier, it was about the line.

Before self checkout, the wal mart near me would on a typical day have 3 or 4 cashiers working. At the height of their adoption, they had 28 self checkouts typically up.

But now, they have 2-3 self checkouts open and a big line, while you can generally find one of the handful of cashiers with no one waiting. It baffles me that people would wait to self-checkout when there’s a cashier open with no line, unless people have just that much social anxiety (a wal mart seems a tricky proposition) or else people are liking their chances for skipping scan of an item here or there.