Funny, self-checkout has made my experience much better when shopping at Whole Foods.

It's true that the checkout itself takes 2-3x as long. But that's more than offset by the fact that instead of waiting in line for 10 minutes, there simply is no line anymore.

So it's sped up my grocery store visits by at least 5 minutes. (It may help that they don't use a weight sensor, so there are never any frustrating errors like the author describes.)