The stores I frequent only have about maybe 2 sq feet on the scale to weigh your items. And you DON’T take something off until you pay. Otherwise the system barks at you. This can not work with a full cart full of food.
Good point. If the stores really wanted to encourage self-checkout, they should offer a discount. Much like discounts (or at least price differentials) appeared when self-pumping gas stations competed with full-service.
But maybe the theft enabled with self-checkouts negates any cost advantage from personnel reduction. If so, why encourage it?
The instant video replay sounds like a great idea. It might have helped when I claimed to have inserted money that was not credited. To clear up the problem, I had to wait a long time while someone reviewed the recording in another room (it turned up inconclusive; so much for verification).
I usually have ten items of less, so in the past I used that staffed checkout line. Unfortunately - that was the same cashier that was responsible for selling cigarettes, lottery tickets and cashing out cartons of empty beer bottles (which seemed to have priority). It became so slow that I was overjoyed when they introduced self-checkout. I’m usually in and out in a minute or two.
I just ran into this today. That shelf isn’t designed for little people. It might be designed for wheelchairs? But honestly, I don’t think someone sitting in a wheelchair could reach it without toppling out of their chair. I think it’s just badly designed, by someone who thinks that “top of a standard box-bottom bag” is the height that should be easy to reach, even though CVS doesn’t provide standard box-bottom bags, but much smaller ones.
A tale of two self-checkout lanes:
Today, I went to the supermarket and bought a loaf of bread and a box of cereal. They didn’t have nail polish remover, so I went to the CVS next door to pick that up, and also grabbed two bottles of nail polish.
The supermarket has just redone their self-checkout area. It’s now what you come to first as you approach the exit, rather than after the manned lanes. I decided to give it a try, despite there being 3 manned lanes open and my general unfamiliarity with self check out. There were 6 machines, 2 in use, and my favorite cashier was hanging around. She made eye contact with me, and I said I wanted to give it a try on my own. Everything was pretty obvious, there was a neat stack of new bags in a slot to the side (which I didn’t use) and I was done in a couple of minutes, without doing anything twice. I used the scanner built into the machine, but as I was gathering my stuff, I noticed that they also had a scanning gun, suitable for heavy items you don’t want to take out of the cart. (I didn’t have a cart, but that would b e nice when I’m stocking up on kitty litter.) I thanked the cashier on my way out, even though she hadn’t done anything, because I knew she was available.
At CVS, there is no staffed check out, just a lot of empty places where clerks could stand and 3 self-checkout machines, two of which say they don’t take cash. The other one is in use. That’s okay, I’m using a card.
The opening screen is very cluttered, and it’s not obvious how to start. I scan an item, and it beeps at me and pops up a question about bagging. No, I don’t want a bag, thanks. I put down my item next to the scanner. I try to scan a second item. It keeps beeping at me about putting down items. Eventually, I realize that it wants me to put my items not on the convenient shelf next to the scanner, but over about a foot, on a little platform about a foot off the floor. I’m a little slow figuring this out, so the clerk (who isn’t allowed to staff the empty checkout counters, and who wasn’t previously visible) comes over, waves a card at the angry machine, and tells me I need to put my stuff down on the platform. He doesn’t want to bend over, either, though, so he just waves and points, even though he’s between me and the platform. I eventually completed my purchase, but the poor clerk needed to coax the machine to start up again at least once more, and it beeped at me a lot. And the screen stayed cluttered and it wasn’t totally obvious how to pay, either.
Let’s just say I may go to a different drug store next time I need something small. It was just an unpleasant experience.
Can I learn to do it? No doubt. But the two situations, which I encountered with 10 minutes of each other, were starkly different.
And while I imagine that CVS has more trouble with theft than my local supermarket, I have to think it would have been easier to pocket that expensive little bottle while I was perusing the shelves, with no humans around, than it would be to do so while checking out, where there are cameras everywhere and also a concentration of live humans.
Had a great time shopping with my LO, his first time in Meijer since pre pandemic. 
The death grip on the cart the wide eyed grimace faced countenance, the lack of executive function when given freedom to choose items. lol I kinda kid. The magnitude of the thrifty acres was almost too much!
So checkout! I scanned he bagged, so much faster with 2
LO? Loan officer?
Probably Little One, as in child. Yet another acronym to master … YAATM.
Yes, acronyms are truly multiplying?
Law Officer?
Less-than-significant Other?
Har har
Loved One. LO. I have many LO’s.
Reading for comprehension can sometimes be … harder than it looks. 
Whoosh!!!11!!
Well it’s clear that you aren’t adverse to misunderstandings.
Of all the places that have these machines, Publix is one that definitely shouldn’t. For the prices they charge, not only should they check me out, they should also send someone home with me to cook, serve, and do the dishes!
D&W grocery will load your groceries in your car.
If you are shopping at Whole Foods, yes.
Never ever, whatever you may need in a hurry, however hungry you are, ever use self checkout at Dollar General.
In fact the DG I go to has a sign telling you not to use it.
I’m not sure what it does. Of course it could be what it doesn’t do that’s the problem.
It’s a scary weird little town and a scary weird DG. They play strange music. The lights are often dim enough I’ve had to use the flashlight on my phone.
The nice check out lady mysterious left about a month ago. Rumors are flying.
One time they actually had bananas for sale. Now that was creep—y!
I have used the DG self-checkout in the past with no problems.
But yesterday I was there and noticed a sign that said not to use it for more than 5 items.
So I didn’t. But I wondered what would have happened if I had tried to.
I usually shop at Food Lions (Raleigh area), and several of them only implemented self-checkouts in the last year. They work just fine for me.
However, during that same period, one of the larger Food Lions near me changed the physical arrangement of their SCOs so they are now inside a set of office partitions. Imagine a square of office partitions about 5’ high. (Yes, they have fabric surfaces.) You enter through a small opening at one corner. The SCOs are arranged so there are two each on two of the sides, pushed up against the partitions. You then exit at a small opening diagonally opposite to the entrance.
Not only is this little “corral” a crowded and awkward place to maneuver carts, it’s literally taller than my wife. She can’t see into or out of it. It’s like being a rat in a maze.
This is obviously an attempt to reduce theft/shrinkage, but I don’t sympathize very much and avoid the SCO at that store whenever possible.
Unless they have a staffer inside the corral every second ISTM it’s encouraging theft by giving the shoplifters a secluded visually-shielded place to secrete their goods.