This "balance" still cuts out a lot of employees and still removes the social interaction for most use cases. My local Home Depot, FWIW, still has a person to do checkout... but I think it is only one person, not even two: the rest of the checkout opportunities are self-checkout.

Also, btw: it isn't so bad to do self-checkout of large items as they have a wireless handheld barcode scanner at each self-checkout stand; it isn't like you are having to lift each item and place it on the platform. There is something similar now at Target, and I routinely self-checkout large/heavy furnishings.