I'm tall, and the scales are nearly at floor level. And if I walk into a grocery store and buy a single bag of milk (which doesn't need another bag because it is a bag so why would I put it in the bagging area?), having to stoop down to put it on the scale is an inconvenience I'd rather avoid. Some stores let you select "no bag" every time and let you proceed to payment, but most don't. Being treated with so much suspicion is also not pleasant.

My solution is to avoid self-checkout at stores with crappy machines, or avoid those stores altogether. If Home Depot can do good self-checkout, why can't everyone else? That's the primary reason I frequent HD over Lowe's.

It can be a hurdle for people who aren't already familiar with the machines and their arcane rules. That quickly becomes a problem if the store doesn't have enough staff to dedicate an employee to the self-checkout area.

I've been seeing this more often in the past few months at understaffed low-cost retailers. When there's nobody around to override the machines, people get frustrated and move on to the next open machine without understanding what went wrong.

Five minutes later, the entire self-checkout area is offline, and the would-be customer sometimes feels sufficiently annoyed and neglected to walk off with their groceries.

> It can be a hurdle for people who aren't already familiar with the machines and their arcane rules.

Right, like I mentioned, it was a very weird first time experience. But my question was addressed to the parent commenter, who is clearly not a first-time user and is aware of how these systems work.

I was asking how it remains a hurdle to someone who's already familiar with it, because this is very far from my own experience. I honestly don't even notice the scale requirement anymore, because placing things on the scale has become subconscious