I had this discussion w/a retail store staff who was trying to persuade me to use the self-checkout instead of waiting in the staff-assisted line.
Staff: Sir, it will be faster if you use the self-check-out line over here.
Me: If I do what you suggest, your store won’t need as many check-out clerks. You seem like you are intent to put your fellow co-workers out of a job.
Staff: Bewildered look on face … lol … but to his credit, I never saw him doing that job again!
Well gee, the first rule in advertising is to get the attention of the prospect, which it seems it did. You know the aida rule.
For myself though I lost interest with all the articles on $200:000 sports cars, interviews
With people like Mary, and and all the hype on new batteries and electric motors. It appears many of these folks had no idea of the general market, just in their own bubble. I could spend ten minutes going through the magazine and find little of interest so I thought why pay for this?
I’ll confess I haven’t read all the postings.
I’d much rather use the self check out IF only getting a small amount of stuff, but if I have a over full shopping cart full of groceries, I expect someone else to check me out and bag all the stuff…
No wonder a small detachment of rebel English headed west to colonize the new continent! Bloody boring old England… 
I like that. Things a proper automotive periodical should emphasize!
I think that this is totally non car-related.
It’s not always boring–or slow–on British motorways, as “Mr. Bean” demonstrated several years ago by driving at too high a speed for the roadway on which he was piloting his McLaren.
I agree with you, but I probably haven’t bought more than a dozen items at a time in a grocery store for many years. Many of the stores are now enforcing a limit on the number of items at a self checkout.
And please don’t buy $14.89 worth of stuff and then pay with wadded up $1.00 bills and then look for small change to feed the machine, that defeats the purpose of fast check out… 
Use a card to pay to keep it moving fast…
Whole Foods stopped accepting cash at their self checkouts last year, and at my usual supermarket (ShopRite), they clearly mark the machines that are “card only”, so that people don’t have to get stuck behind the type of folks that you described.
I almost always use self checkout, whether lumber store or grocery.
If I don’t, will the store hire more cashiers? No, remember when K-Mart advertised “More than three people in-line, we will open another line”? Did they? No, was at a K-Mart, about eight people in line, sign about the policy had an 800 phone number, lady behind me called the number, their response “ we don’t do anything about it, just log the call”.
Remember too, majority of these store allow you to order on line for curbside pickup. I use that on occasion.
One thing about self service, age verification. Alcohol and spray paint-always, gasoline additives maybe, maybe not! Yet if you want to get a buzz from nitrous oxide, anyone can buy aerosol whip cream without age verification.
+1
That is the only limitation, as far as I am concerned, with self checkouts. Twice, at Wamart, I had to summon assistance when I tried to buy Marvel Mystery Oil. Yes, Wally World requires age verification when purchasing MMO!
That is what we (my household) do 99.9% of the time now, and it has 0% to do with Covid and everything to do with disability(s)…
I feel similarly. What bothers me most is cashiers that do not value my groceries or other goods as much as I do. Rough handling- esp fruits, packing weird things together like sharp edges that can puncture meat wrap etc. The other day I had some older woman that obviously didn’t like her career choice, was tossing my stuff from the scanner area onto the out take belt. Not placing it, tossing it. She missed with a gallon of milk that fell to the floor. Without saying a word, she just picked it up and tossed it back onto the belt…I’m spending $500+ dollars on goods here…well not anymore 
The only time I buy magazines now is if I am flying somewhere and want reading material…
I am just ticked off that since I always use Home Depot’s self-checkout I didn’t get invited to their employee Christmas party 
You guys reminded me of the time I was at a local (national chain) auto parts store. They had a couple of big tables set up with hot dogs, hamburgers etc to make your own. I stood at the checkout for quite a long time waiting. All the employees were at these tables loading up on food. Finally, one of them comes over but does not check me out. There’s a line forming behind me. I ask him what’s going on? thinking he will get the hint. Instead he says, it’s customer appreciation day… no joke.
My mother used to say that cashiers were purposely placing her packages of cream cheese at the bottom of the bag, where they would get smooshed by heavy items. I don’t think that they did this purposely, but instead simply didn’t bother to put any thought into what they were doing.
Several years ago, I got a couple of items at a Stop & Shop market, and the nasty female cashier put my bunch of parsley on the bottom of the bag, and then proceeded to put a cantaloupe on top of the parsley. I politely called her out on that action, and she snarled “you’re just going to chop that parsley, so it doesn’t matter”.
Whether it was because of customer disatisfaction with that store or not, I take some comfort in the fact that it closed–for good–a few years ago.
I was being sarcastic about the reasons why British separatists came here in the first place.
Purebred:
I insist on patronizing cashiers because I want to be part of the solution for job creation/retention.
All of the purchasing avenues you use are part of the problem.
Hey, I you wish to wait in line, so be it. Will not change any store’s hiring policy. Do you refuse to shop department stores that have eliminated layaway? When I worked layaway we had six employees, but that store eliminated layaway!
Or you can go to Aldi, no self service lanes there. I will never be as fast as their cashiers. But I suppose you object to their shopping carts, eliminated job for employees to bring in the carts.
Man talk about off topic. I spent four hours as a bag boy bagging groceries and wheeling them out to their CAR. I thought it was going to be a dream job but it was humiliating. I was happy to return to my restaurant job where people didn’t complain so much about how their groceries were bagged. So have a little mercy.
As far a using dollar bills at the self service check out, it’s a good way to get rid of them but I never make people wait. I keep 20s and higher in my bill fold, so the rest go on my money clip. I tend to get a bunch of ones. When I get 15-20 of them, I’ll feed them into the self Check out. I won’t make anyone wait though.
At Costco you can’t use cash to buy a hot dog. So I end up using the debit card for $3, for two hot dogs. I suspect at some point the bank will start a service charge for small transactions. Not my smallest though. It was a dollar for soap at the hotel laundry, and once paid a 50 cent toll for the Chicago toll way after the fact.