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I think this article is a bit misleading. According to the original article[1], they're not getting rid of the self checkout lanes, they're getting rid of "Mobile Scan & Go" which is using a mobile app to scan and checkout.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-15/-leery-cu...

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A grocery chain near me tried the mobile hand-scanner concept over a decade ago. The trial stores quietly cancelled the program about a year later. I asked the manager and he said the scanner-enabled stores were showing higher theft rates.

The store had a weak mechanism in place to prevent theft (random 'audits' by cashiers to match your cart to the receipt), but it was obvious there were way too many ways to game the system.

Self-checkout must be doing okay. The Target I frequent just remodeled and tripled the number of machines.

Yes, I'm quite sure that what is happening is that a particular solution wasn't working well, so they're discontinuing it and continuing with the general search for better solutions.

I'm confident they're still working toward solutions that require less from customers, not just less from employees.

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