I notice that it’s mostly older people that seem to hate self-checkouts.
On the other hand, there are far more problems with old human style checkouts.
1. Getting stuck in line behind some oldster who insists on slooooooooowly and laboriously taking ten minutes writing out a check that in the era of Check 21 is going to get processed as a debit transaction and handed back to them when they could have just swiped a debit card and noted the transaction in the register instead in a tenth of the time.
2. Getting stuck behind someone who has fifty items in the ten items or less lane.
3. Getting stuck behind someone who insists on paying in pennies.
4. Having inattentive or stupid staff work very, very slowly - spending three minutes to scan a bar code when it didn’t work the first 200 times, that sort of thing.
5. Having staff poorly bag your groceries - say, sticking gallons of milk on top of your carton of eggs, always a favorite.
With self checkout, you’re never stuck behind snails, if the service is slow you only have yourself to blame and the items are bagged to your satisfaction.
3. Getting stuck behind someone who insists on paying in pennies.
And the people who d*** around with checks or coins always wait until the total is announced to reach for them - like they didn't expect to have to pay at all.
“I notice that it’s mostly older people that seem to hate self-checkouts.”
That’s because you younger people grew up in an ere where the stores conditioned YOU to do their tasks for them...and not compensate you.
You have no recollection of what true, pleasant service was like because it all happened before you had your breakfast this morning.
Personally, I don’t ever use self checkouts. In fact, I will demand a human cashier to open a lane. I don’t like the machine telling me to scan your next item, unknown item in bagging area, scan your next item, insert cash or select payment type. It has no Shut Up I Can Do This Without Verbal Prompting button. As far as waiting in line behind someone writing a check or paying with coins, I am so much better than other people. I have patience, because my day is going to proceed just fine no matter what inconvenience a trivial delay at a checkout causes me. Patience used to be called a virtue, but people don’t have that any more.