For me the only possible benefit was to save time, and on that self-checkout machines have failed miserably. Generally there is at least one problem but often

For me the only possible benefit was to save time, and on that self-checkout machines have failed miserably. Generally there is at least one problem but often two problems that these machines refuse to clear for me without waiting for help from an employee, and that almost obliterates any time savings all by itself. A lot, if not all, of the problems are self-inflicted poor design choices! There is NO REASON TO CARE ABOUT BAGGING; I’m sure this is some ill-conceived notion of anti-theft or whatever but when you aggravate 200 paying customers for every banana theft that you prevented, you’ve still lost. A human cashier can scan dozens of items and toss them aside in seconds!! You cannot come even close to that rate of speed when Every Single Item has to be scanned (and often re-scanned), then moved all the way over somewhere else (and then removed and added again before the computer is happy). And if you have the audacity to buy a vegetable, whose codes cashiers mostly know by heart, you will again be much slower yourself. Not to mention that the entire idea of bagging breaks down with the recent craze to bring your own bags or simply choose not to use a bag, because the computer freaks the hell out when you just want to scan your two items and pay and get out without leaving the required sacrifices on the Altar of the Bagging Lord. And there’s always at least one employee doing almost nothing except resetting computers. You know what that person could do? Accept cards in advance to start running them through the system while you’re screwing with your groceries, then press a button so that when you’re ready to pay you basically just have to tap a button and sign. Yet of course they don’t do that, they’d rather create the slowest and most unhelpful self-payment system in history, while people are waiting, which of course you can’t even reach until you satisfy the Bagging Lord in the previous step.