Don't use self-checkouts. You do all the work, slower than the cashier, and are treated like cattle. Often there is a supervisor breathing down your neck and demanding the receipt before the exit doors open. Now there is facial recognition.
Some self checkouts are better than others the worst ones are the ones that don’t let you take your items off the scale after scanning and then they throw an error for you to put them back.
I’ve also never felt treated like cattle but I’d figure a checkout with a cashier is more cattle like since you are being funneled through a tight space one after the other vs an open space like self checkouts.
Many stores near me appeared to cut cashiers before they added self-checkouts. If anything, adding self-checkouts increased the number of available options to get out of the store faster.
I'd place my bets on curbside pickup getting pushed more before cashiers get added given how popular it's become as an option.
Only in recent years have self-checkouts started appearing in any significant number, and the formula hasn't changed. I guess theoretically stores might be able to cut back on employees, but it would be literally one or two people at most.
Of all of this hassle, the cashier merely handles a single step. You already do all the work.
I'm not sure what you mean by "treated like cattle". I haven't really had a bad experience with self-checkout, granted, we probably don't live in the same country / culture.
The receipt checking happens with the cashier as well, just implicitly. If anything, they are treated badly, with having to stand most of the time in the US. Absolutely unnecessary.
Facial recognition I don't like either, but stores (and others) will do that anyways, with self-checkout being, at most, an excuse to develop/improve/deploy such systems. Theft would be a problem/excuse anyways for stores, and advertising is a pretty big trojan horse in this regard as well. Self-checkout doesn't make a difference here.
(This is getting tangential, but I do exactly what you describe, and I really appreciate that I can do it on my terms, without having to accommodate three other people: the one in front of me, the cashier, and the one next in line.)
Uh, no? Ralphs absolutely has a full order and pay online thing, then you just drive to the store and get your groceries delivered to your car. I used it just yesterday as I can't go anywhere after my oral surgery.
Not sure what stores you're going to go but this is nowhere near my experience.
Not only do I have the muscle memory, still after 30 years, I also have the added incentive of knowing the value of my own time, not being fatigued from hours of work, the ability pre-position items in the cart at an optimal orientation for handling and scanning, and foreknowledge of what items I have and a plan for how best to bag them that was made prior to my arrival at self-checkout.
So, yeah, I scan faster.
Much faster.
edit: oh man this has brought up a bunch of frustrations. Why do customers just pile shit on the counter? When I interact with a cashier, like at a gas station on a long road trip, every item I place on the counter has the barcodes oriented towards the person, so they can just "zap zap zap zap" the items rapid-fire without handling them. My bag (I live in a civilized state that has banned plastic bags) is ready and waiting, items are organized and presented in an order that make sense for ease of bagging. My payment method is ready. The experience is efficient and quick.
It takes no mental effort to do any of this and yet I am constantly stuck behind people who act as though they are purchasing things for the first time in their entire lives and the process is as foreign to them as communicating in the language of an extraterrestrial intelligence is to me.
But to answer your question, after a year I use those 30 extra minutes to play Sonic the Hedgehog six or seven times, nibbling on an ice cream sandwich between acts and zones, a sandwich that eventually melts and makes a great mess of things including all over my Genesis controller, which I clean in the kitchen while looking out the window over the sink.
Also the only place truly training cashiers, AFAICT, is Aldi's.
Their self-checkouts used to be slow because the registers would verify the weight of items on the scale (the surface where you bag it) before letting you put it in the cart. If it didn't like the weight it would force you to put it back in the bag. I don't think they do this anymore. Asset protection can view a camera pointed at the scanner and bags if they think you're stealing.
Furthermore, it's hard for Walmart to retain people, so cashiers are treated like a dump stat. They won't really dedicate people to checking out anymore unless that's all they can do, e.g. elderly, so someone who's a cashier all day tends to be slow because they're accomodating that person. So you could be the fastest cashier in the world but it won't mean anything as far as raises, etc. Your fast cashiers are often pulled off and stocking unless its super busy.
(I wish I was kidding; discounters that squeeze costs everywhere including cashier throughput seem to be the exception in retail.)
Even aside from the line, the only thing clerks are sometimes faster at in my experience is ringing up fresh produce where codes have to be typed in (these codes are usually on a label on the produce, but if not you have to go through a lookup procedure if you haven't memorized the code).
Supermarkets usually have old slow people running them. The only time I don't use self checkout is when I have alcohol, and it is slower every single time than doing it myself.
Personally, I'm faster at scanning items than most cashiers are. I used to work in retail, though, so maybe that's just me.
I haven't ever experienced a receipt check while using self-checkout. If I did, I'd stop visiting that store. That's a bright red line for me. To my partner's chagrin, it's one of the reasons I won't go into Costco.
While self-checkout is less private in a lot of ways (see article) I value it because I have social anxiety and would prefer to avoid too much (or too little!) smalltalk with cashiers -- especially about the items I'm buying.
Not self checkout related, but the Kroger stores by me have all started having security guards check receipts before you can leave the store. They do this whether or not you do self checkout. Accordingly, I have stopped patronizing those stores because I refuse to spend my money at a business that treats me like a criminal. I sympathize in that they are trying to stop theft, but I'm not going to put up with that particular method of deterrence.
They got rid of it eventually and I started shopping there again, but if they start doing receipt checks they're back on the shit list.
Besides, most places nowadays you have to explicitly ask for a receipt or press extra buttons within a 5-second time window to get one.