At my local store there is 1 cashier with one of those conveyor belts machines, and 6 self-checkout machines. The cashier and the conveyor belt machine takes up

At my local store there is 1 cashier with one of those conveyor belts machines, and 6 self-checkout machines. The cashier and the conveyor belt machine takes up about room as 3 of the self-checkout machines, and operates at about the same speed as one of the self-checkout machines. Plus obviously it's more expensive as you need to pay the wages of the person standing there just to grab your food and bring it to the infrared scanner one by one. So my experience is the polar opposite of yours, self-checkout is just superior.