In a kind of odd confirmation of the article, I don't like the automated/self-checkout because I suck at scanning and bagging groceries.

I remember seeing a commercial for something one time where somebody just pushed a cart full of groceries through a portal-thing, and it automatically found all of the items and their prices, by RFID or something, found his credit card in his wallet the same way, and auto-charged it for all of the groceries. If they had that, I'd do it.