re: People who won’t use self checkouts….

In the WalMart world I’ll use them because I would prefer not to do more than necessary to keep WalMart in business….the worse the experience for everyone the quicker they take the KMart dive. I do everything I can to avoid WalMart. We have a Food Lion close to the house and their prices are probably 5% higher than WalMart….but they have high school kids running cash registers, bagging groceries, stocking shelves, cleaning….the typical high school job. It’s worth 5% to me to help create a sense of working in those kids….they will benefit greatly from the experience. WalMart is the cheapest but the cost to society is way more expensive. Kroger and Publix is not much better but I will go to either before going to WalMart. Not everyone can afford a 5% tax but for those who can it is money well spent.

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Small # of items - self checkout.
Large # of items - regular checkout.

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This also depends on the lines at each.

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Employees and their benefits cost a lot of money. The labor required to manage unreliable people also carries a high cost. Customers pay those costs in the price of the goods.

Anything we can do to help keep the cost of labor down will help all customers of that store afford more goods for their families AND it sends an accurate market signal to laborers that other jobs may be better alternatives for them.

By minimizing the number of entry level jobs that can be automated, the store is free to hire more humans for tasks that are desirable, but not as cost effective.

Thus ends the first lesson of Economics 101.

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all of this is great in theory.....but more and more self-check outs are popping up and the prices of goods keep rising.

Your Economics 101 lesson doesn't take into consideration corporate greed. Just because they're saving labor costs doesn't automatically mean it's passed onto the customer.

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How is it benefitting the customer? You don't pay a cheaper price for using it and they aren't paying you to do the work.

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It’s benefitting me because I can do absolutely everything better and faster than any employee there. I wish fast food places would let me go back there and make my own food. I’d be in and out in half time time and it would always be right.

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It’s benefitting me because I can do absolutely everything better and faster than any employee there.

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That's amazing. How many medals have you been awarded for this outstanding achievement?

The ones at Albertsons are the absolute worst. They give you about one square feet of space to put your groceries after scanning and bagging. God forbid you need to move a bag to your basket to make room because an alarm goes off and the damn FBI descend upon you. I’ll do it with a handful of groceries but prefer to go to the regular checkout lanes if I have a basket full and especially if I have alcohol. I hate waiting on them to come type in my birthdate and remove the anti theft device from my Titos.

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I fricking hate it when people go to self check out with a full cart. Self checkout should be for 15-20 items max

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I agree but I’ve also been forced to go with a rather full cart because there was only 1 or 2 lanes open and they each had 4-5 people in line. I don’t mind waiting a few minutes but I’m not waiting 15-20 minutes, at least, in a line.

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Needless to say, that put me in a horrible mood the rest of the day.

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Lol why?

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Don’t they realize these low end jobs are better off being automated?

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Maybe you should ask the low end employees who find themselves unemployed what they think.