I think this is an underappreciated reason. Stores have shifted their labor onto the consumers, which ostensibly keeps their costs down, but since it's happenin

I think this is an underappreciated reason. Stores have shifted their labor onto the consumers, which ostensibly keeps their costs down, but since it's happening at a time costs are rising, nobody's going to notice if the costs are really rising more slowly. If you're wealthy, it feels a bit like a subsidy of other people's groceries. You do the work so everyone can have low prices (or at least prices that rise slower), but if you don't care about lower prices, it's an imposition. Or at least all that would be true were it not for the fact that there are other options to pay money for time. At my grocery store, the fee for having them do the shopping and scanning for you and bring it out to your car is a whopping $3. I can have someone bring it all the way to the front door of my house for a $10 fee and a $5 tip. It's a long way from required that I waste my time at the self-checkout.