I like them in theory, if there is no line. But I’m almost always buying beer and/or produce, so I don’t often use them.
If I am going to do the checking, they why do I not get a discount?
Same reason you don’t get a discount for pumping your own gas? I dunno. I don’t really know the ins and outs of grocery store employment plans but I doubt people actively choosing the cashier over the self-scan are really doing all that much to save jobs and I question the utility of ‘saving jobs’ anyway. Do you avoid washing and drying machines and instead hire people to do your laundry? Do you eschew turbotax so you can patronize a tax accountant? What makes cashiering so special that we need to save it?
Never seen/use one, so I voted “other”.
You can use them with cash? I’ve never seen one up close since I always assumed you needed to use something like EFTPOS.
I use them, but they always go wrong for me and I end up bothering a member of staff anyway.
I bring my own bags, and sometimes the bag starting weight doesn’t work. Call a checkout person.
Buying beer? Age check required. Call a checkout person.
Item doesn’t scan? Call a checkout person (last time it was “if it ain’t on the system then you can’t buy it”)
THERE IS A PROBLEM WITH YOUR ITEM. Unspecified. Call a checkout person.
UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA. Call a checkout person.
I would like if they existed in addition to, rather than a replacement for, cashiers. If you had the same number of cashiers but had the extra lanes available to let the traffic go there if they want, great. But in practice my regular grocery store rarely has more than 2 actual cashiers working, and from about 10pm-8am (when I do most of my grocery shopping) there are no cashiers at all and the self checkout is the only way.
When I grocery shop, I usually do a decent amount of shopping - maybe 30 or 40 items - so it’s a pain to have to scan them and bag them all myself. The areas at the local store are really only meant to hold maybe 2 or 3 bags worth of stuff - they’re designed for people who want to check out a few items I think. But since so often they’re the only option, I often have to spend quite a bit of time trying to scan everything, bag everything, and usually the machine flips out at least 2 or 3 times about the weight on the bags being wrong and I have to call the attendant over anyway. It’s usually a hassle.
So if I’m looking to go through the store in the middle of the day and pick up 5 things, they’re great. If I’m forced to use them because I went shopping at midnight for a week’s worth of groceries, they’re a pain in the ass.
I’m like some others. Quick trip for a small amount of stuff? Self checkout. A full cart? Cashier.
Now that I think about it, I remember when my local grocery store first installed the things a few years ago they used much worse software than they do now. The stupid things would constantly complain about how you set the items down, how long it took you, and just randomly do all sorts of bitching about not following the impossibly precise soup nazi procedures they wanted you to do. I dug up an old e-mail I sent to someone after encountering that shitty system:
I do not like them. I do use them because they are often the fastest way out, but I do not like them.
For whatever reason, I seem to always have problems in those damned lines. I keep getting the machine barking at me that I haven’t bagged an item, when it’s clearly sitting in the fucking bag in the goddamed baggage area, and I have to remove it and add it several times for it to register properly (if at all.) Then, if that doesn’t happen, I get the “unexpected item in baggage area” that seems to appear out of nowhere. Furthermore, I’m often buying alcohol, so I have to sit around like a jackass and wait for somebody to clear my items through the self-checkout.
I would certainly prefer more cashiers working to self-checkout lines. Thank Christ my Target and nearest supermarket haven’t succumbed to this infuriating, pain-in-the-ass technology.
The first place I used them in Denver had a lady who ran the selfs who was really on top of things. I could fly through things throwing them in bags, she would see that I was going to exceed the storage area, and before I had to turn around and raise my hand or anything she would say " Bag one is set, you can remove it" So I could grab it, throw it in the end of the cart and keep going like a machine.
Now the place where I go has a dumb lady. She either doesn’t know about, or refuses to use the technology, and insists you keep stacking bags on top of bags. I finally got fed up with my fragiles( like eggs and tomatoes which I carefully keep till the end so I can keep them on top) teetering on a poorly engineered tower, and just do 2 transactions to clear the station. The store can eat two credit card transactions if she won’t cooperate.
I love them. I’m all for human interaction, but the types of human interaction that I enjoy aren’t generally me and “employee who wishes they were anywhere but where they are right now.”
I used to avoid them, but right now they have the advantage that I don’t have to deal with disapproving glares when I pull out my foodstamp card. I don’t think most cashiers give a damn, actually, and being white means I’m more likely seen as a victim of misfortune than a “welfare queen”, but every so often there’s the one who frowns at me, or makes some comment about the crate of diet pop (for my husband - it’s the only food luxury he asks for) in amongst the whole grains, vegetables, fruit, and little bit of meat. Or this time of year, makes a snide comment implying I should be buying vegetables (right now, almost all vegetables we’re eating come from the backyard).
The downside, of course, is that six pack of beer I purchase maybe once every two or three months (only when I’m actually earning some money - part of my problem is that I’ve only had temporary and intermittent jobs these past few years) and the attendant has to OK it. But I know it’s coming and just stand patient, and people still don’t know I’m using the foodstamps for the food portion while paying cash for the beer. It’s none of their business, of course, but certain people never learned that.
Otherwise - if it’s not food then I’ll gravitate towards a check-out with a cashier, but I don’t get put out if one isn’t open but the self-checkout is. From what I’ve seen, there are usually about as many self-check attendants as their used to be cashiers, so maybe the feared job loss isn’t there, at least at some stores.
ETA: Also, with self-check I don’t have to deal with Stupid Bagging Practices, which produced some epic rants from me in my early days here on the Dope.
If you do it right, you do get a discount 
I love em. Of couse I’ve been in retail for 22 years, so I know how to scan and bag as well as if not better than most cashiers anyways. I take my beer to a human, if the U-Scan person isn’t right at the stand though.
I do somewhat agree with this, but on the other hand I tend to use them in the middle of the night (I work shifts) when it wouldn’t be cost-effective for the shop to staff the lanes.
What really pisses me off about them is the nonsense about bagging stuff exactly when and where they say. If I wanted to steal from the shop, I wouldn’t scan an item then not put it in the bag 
Can anyone explain what that’s all about?
Get rid of the weight scales. I could have been buying caviar as bananas all along now, but I haven’t, so how about more trust and less PITA?
I use them on occasion, when it seems like the quicker route, but I have two problems with them. First, there always seems to be that one item that refuses to scan for me or for a person in front of me and it ends up taking longer than the non-self-serve. Second, there was the time at Home Depot that the person in front of me scanned and took his items but failed to pay for them. I was relatively new to the process at the time and didn’t notice what was happening. I ended up paying for his order and mine both. I was 30 miles away at home before I noticed I got cheated out of $5 or $10, too far to justify going back for a refund. That made me vow never to do the self-checkout thing again. I’ve since relented, but I generally prefer not to use them.
On the other hand, I love love love being able to pay for gasoline at the pump with a credit or debit card. I haven’t gone inside to pay for about five years and don’t miss it at all.
I don’t like waiting in lines, so the self checkout offers more options not to wait.
I like the concept of them, but the computers are often slow to register what’s going on. Several times, I’ve scanned an item, placed it in the bag, only to hear “Please place the item in the b…” before the scale kicks in and lets the computer know that the item is *already *in the bag.