I think I would call it “Helena”.
I have no issue with self-checkout. The ones at my Food Lion are usually available and there’s always an employee hovering nearby in case of problems. I use the ones at Aldi also - only had a problem once and it was easily resolved. No issues at WalMart, either, except they don’t have tap-to-pay - seriously??
There have been times when there was no line at a manned checkout and a backup at self-check, so the choice was easy. And if I have a full cart, I’m more likely to go to a regular lane. Generally, I look for what will get me out of the store faster.
Personally, I think having options is great. The more the merrier. People can pick and choose what they’re comfortable with or what they need on a particular trip.
I know, I know… that makes too much sense.
My primary stores with self checkout are Publix, CVS, and Target.
I find all 3 easy to use, once I broke their respective codes. Each is a bit challenging in different ways for first time users.
IMO anyone running a cart through self-checkout totally deserves all the annoyances they receive. To me self-checkout is the super-express line. Few items, all simple, pay by card. Bang bang done. That is it’s sweet spot and any other use constitutes mis-use. IMO YMMV.
I also suspect that how user-friendly these things are depends a bit on the neighborhood. The machines in a store with a low shoplifting rate can be in a much less defensive configuration than those in high shoplifting areas.
My mileage for sure varies. I’ve seen several times in this thread “Can’t do/Shouldn’t do full carts in self-checkout!” Yet in my slice of the world, there’s no issue at all with checking out a full cart in a self-checkout. Takes longer than self-checking-out three items, yes – but a full cart takes longer than three items in a traditional cashier line, too.
Prior to the past month, in many stores I go to, there were no staffed lines. All were self checkout. That’s changed recently as stores have figured out that we’ve been actually stealing from them in the self checkout lines.
What do you mean by this?
I mean: “Once I learned how to operate them.” What things to do in what order, whether it cares about bagging, when and how to use coupons, etc.
There are a lot of features on these things. And no two stores use the same system set up the same way. After the broadest outline of “scan all your items and pay the total”, everything else is idiosyncratic arbitrary details. Which you often have to discover by doing, and doing badly, since they don’t come with instruction manuals, nor are any of us inclined to read them if they did.
Once you know the idiosyncrasies, they’re familiar and simple enough. Until then they’re simply a baffling array of obstacles to your hoped-for progress. In other words, self-checkout machines are computers. 
And just how long did it take to dawn on the insulated types who probably have their minions do the shopping, so have no clue about the real grocery store world? 
My wife works at a large grocery store, and she hates working self-checkout. Yes, in her store they do have a cashier running them- but it’s one cashier for like 8 registers, so it still saves.
Got it, I thought you meant there were hidden secrets to these machines. SHOW ME YOUR SECRETS, CVS SELF CHECKOUT.
Sorry. “broke the code” is standard military / aviation slang for “figured it out despite TPTB’s best efforts to make that harder than it ought to be”.
Huh. My store’s corporate overlords dictate no more than 6 self-checkouts per attendants. For the clusters with 12 we have two attendants. If it get REALLY busy they send over a third. But that’s probably an example of how different companies handle self checkouts.
Yeah, in my experience, cart vs. no cart is not really a relevant factor.
Time for me to chime in on this thread again…I am of the old-school who likes to do stuff by themselves. When pumping gas became practical/legal decades ago, I thought that was wonderful. I didn’t have to wait for an attendant to recognize me and ask me questions like “check the oil?”. I could fill my tank myself and quickly be done with it.
So when self-checkout became available at stores, that procedure made sense – can’t I do it myself, and save time/hassle?
I found out that the first self-checkout machines were so poorly designed that this didn’t work, so I shunned the self-checkout lanes for years. Then I tried a new design at Wal-Mart and found it made sense, and I could checkout as fast or faster than any clerk.
Now I am a firm believer in the current Wal-Mart self-checkout system. On occasion, I have tried other stores’ self-checkout systems, and they don’t equate with the good Wal-Mart system. So I use the ones I like and ignore the ones that aren’t customer-friendly.
Maybe the difference is partly how the system works. Wal-Mart has a dozen self-checkout machines; some have wide spaces on one side, others have less. None require you to use the right or left side for any function, and none have weighing verification (other than a scale for items that must be weighted). IMHO, the current crop of machines is reasonably consumer-friendly, and I use them every time. Other stores, not so much, and some, not at all.
Yeah the Wal-Mart self checkouts are great except for them not taking any kind of tap-to-pay. It’s annoying to have to fish out my wallet and pull out a credit card when I could so easily just tap my watch. They’re the only major store I can think of that doesn’t use Apple Pay.
hah - we just went to New Jersey for the weekend; that’s the one state I know of that does not allow self-service gas stations. Gas may be cheaper there, and it provides a source of minimum-wage jobs, but it takes so much longer!
My local City Market tried that. It did not work out. The scan codes below the items where - missing or the scanner would not read it. A real PITA (as long as we are going with acronyms) for shoppers and store employees.
They have since abandoned the ‘scan as you go’ thing.
Planning to scan a shelf label is utterly stupid. Scan the UPC on the item itself. If the store was that stupid, I pity the fool that buys their company out of BK.
One of the Wal-Marts in suburban St. Louis announced they were shutting down the self-checkout lines, starting pretty much immediately. Somewhere between customer complaints, equipment foul-ups, and outright theft, they’ve decided the cost savings of eliminating a few cashiers just isn’t worth it.