At Costco, they forced me to empty out my very fat cart and scan each item individually. That's when I realized the value of cashiers.

It feels like “virtual stuck behind a bus”, then doing the company a favor for the experience.

The only time, for me, this is true, is when it's empty and I have very few items. If there's a line, I'd rather wait for the cashier. Self-checkout seems to get clogged up with people waiting for the supervising human the busier it is, so to have a human or two (one ringing one bagging) when I've got a cart and there's a line, is advantageous.

I'm also pretty anti-social and actually prefer the robotic banter of quickly checking out with a person to the anxious nightmare of just trying to buy something real quick and now waiting because the machine hates life more than me.

Oh and many of the folks doing the bagging at some of the stores are disabled, and I dunno - I hope we're taking care of people in those jobs.

For ninety nine out of a hundred scenarios, I've never had to wait for a supervising human at all. Maybe it's where I shop, but generally speaking, I've almost never had a problem with people needing to see my checked out items.

It's a marginal improvement perhaps, but nothing to write home about. And for other things (e.g. booking travel) the self-service experience can be worse.

Not sure about that, I prefer to know all aspects of booking travel that I would not trust to another agent, human or otherwise. Therefore, I believe your statement applies to some people and not others.