Where I see self-checkouts, I see customers choosing them voluntarily, and staff who seem perfectly cheerful and willing to help with the normal issues that arise, as well as "training" less-savvy customers to use them.

Personally, I would use them every time if I could. I'd much rather minimize my interactions with strangers while shopping.

Yeah there are confounding factors at play here, such as there being many automated checkouts but only one with a person.

> staff ... "training" less-savvy customers to use them.

Training the customers is one of the things I find most depressing. From the supermarket's perspective, customers have apparently accepted that they must do unpaid work that used to be done by paid staff. Scanning items, typing in product codes when the scanner doesn't work, looking up loose goods in a catalogue and weighing them, responding to beeps and prompts, etc. And even better, watching advertising. Sure, these are all 'first world problems', but societies should be improving their citizens' lives rather than whittling away their autonomy. It might be just a papercut, but it's death by a billion papercuts.

> I'd much rather minimize my interactions with strangers while shopping.

Social isolation is a major and growing problem in western societies (see my other comment). People choose the path of least resistance even if it's long-term suboptimal, and minimising interactions with strangers seems like an unfortunate choice. Obviously, I'm making a bunch of assumptions that might not be fair, and you have my sympathies if your neighbourhood is full of arseholes :)

I am not saying there are no stores deliberately offloading work onto customers, but a) it's clearly not all stores, and b) I, at least, actively prefer using self-checkout, and do not care that it puts a negligible amount of work onto my shoulders.

And gee, thanks for moralizing at me about causing the downfall of society by (checks notes) not wanting to add to my introverted self's overall burden of stress by interacting pointlessly with strangers just in order to get the food I need to survive. Maybe (as I suggested in my first post here) don't assume that your experiences are universal?

Loyalty systems are an interesting point to raise, since in a self-checkout system they can't nag you as effectively to join. Otherwise they're an orthogonal concern.

I'd disagree with your point about effective nagging. A human might get the message, particularly if they know you. An automated checkout never will, every transaction is identical.

Obviously my perspective is very "bah humbug". However, there are several major issues in modern western societies, including social isolation, spiralling cost of living, and the ongoing death of the highstreet. I see automated checkouts as another nail in the coffin. Melodramatic perhaps, but there it is. I'd happily exchange an automated supermarket for a string of corner shops run by flawed humans.