Technology

But at least they harvested tons of biometric, personal, behavioral and health data connected to account names and numbers to sell to data harvesters, merchants, hackers, governments and other ill intentioned groups, right?? So not all a loss.

The store I worked at in high school got rid of all of its self checkout right after I stopped working there. Let me tell ya, I've never gone in there since then. I don't want to have to talk to someone who may recognize me. Although it's been like 12 years now so I'm prooooobably okay lol

The problem with self checkout is when things gone wrong, either the customer will cancel their transaction, ignore the problem and deny accountability , brute forcing which breaking the rules , or search for the staff for solution. It just make the failure more prominent thus defeating the very solution that self checkout offer.

I noticed that with self-checkout terminals, fruit varieties are still mis-labeled and missing. I noted that because I write down the price for such items, to be sure I enter the correct variety and price. It wasn't there. Not only you'd pay more than is on the label - you also risk to be accused of theft if there is a bag ceck. And if you call somebody to correct it, you waste several minutes since the missing variety might not even be in the system.

But I love my self-checkout discounts. It would suck if I had to start paying for everything in my cart again.

Well other technologies like accounting software are "at least 40%" and self checkout is at 36%, according to the article, so I don't think this is as devastating as one might think at first glance:

Of 340 retail operators surveyed in 2026's Voice of the Retail Industry Survey, only 36% say they plan to invest in self-checkout, down seven percentage points from last year. Self-checkout was the least popular technology and the only one to see lower interest YoY. Other investments, such as automated invoices, electronic shelf labels, and accounting software, attracted at least 40% of surveyed retailers.

And of course less retailers are investing in the tech than in previous years: they've all already got it.

Looks like the "Voice of Retail Industry" survey the article cites only surveyed US-american stores.

Such a weird hatred against a fundamentally useful tool that means fewer people need to do an objectively shitty, monotonous job (=cashiers).

Here in Europe, we have enough people manning the registers that you can always opt to go to a human if you have a huge cart (and potentially wait a few minutes, or more during rush hour), or if you have less than ten items (quite often really, I buy dinner bread practically daily), you go to a self-checkout, and you're out in less than a minute.

It helps queue times when you need speed and are buying a few things only, and is literally irrelevant when you have a full cart, as you're better off going through a proper cash register anyway.

Note that the fact that hypercapitalist american supermarkets take this as an invitation to permanently understaff manned registers is not a fault of the machines themselves