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You would think there should be some sort of reward in the form of saved time from going to the supermarket at an unpopular time. But my closest supermarket changes the staffing levels at checkout to coincide with the level of shoppers. So, I spend the same amount of time in line no matter when I go.

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Lots of grocery stores in the US have a bunch of self checkout lanes and only 2-3 cashier lanes. Walmart, target, Kroger, Lowe's Foods, etc.

It does help if you go when there's low traffic.

Where I live (Seattle), a portion of the self-checkout lanes are also closed to coincide with the level of shoppers. I was told that this is because of labor unions - basically it guarantees work for the cashiers.

I've never successfully used self-checkout at a grocery store without triggering the anti-theft mechanisms. I used to have this problem at CVS but I'm pretty sure they've disabled the scales in recent years. Likewise for Target--scales disabled. I assume grocery store theft is more common, or perhaps their margins too slim, to disable the measures.

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