I have to admit that I quite enjoy¹ the self-checkout in two of the places I sometimes buy from:

* they are done with a handheld device that you carry with you to scan things as you get your groceries
* this means that you always know how much you're going to spend for what you have in the cart, without having to keep track in other ways
* the handheld terminals only give a beep when you scan things, the places where you pay at the end don't talk
* they don't do the weighting thing
* problems and controls are handled by regular checkout people: sometimes it may take some time to get their attention, but they tend to be on the nicer end of the scale
* when you're done paying, all your stuff is already in your bags (divided by where everything should go when back home), and you don't have to fill them in a hurry because there are people behind you that need to use the space for their things (having somebody else fill your bags has not been a thing here at least since the 1980s when I have memories).

I assume that the filming is happening in all of the shop anyway

¹ as much as I enjoy anything in the whole experience of buying groceries, which is not a lot of enjoyment

I hate them everywhere else in the world because:

1. They’re shitty, coded with the feet. All the time;
2. They yell at me with a shitty loud-ass synthetic voice every five seconds;
3. They film me;
4.They weight my items to make sure I don’t cheat, and it never works properly;
5.Problems and controls are handled by security, which is never readily available and rarely nice.

1. They work. All the time;
2. They don’t yell at me with a shitty synthetic voice;
3. They don’t film me;
4. I can use them when I’m in a hurry and/or have only a few items and/or the cashier is busy elsewhere and I don’t want to interrupt them;
5. In the rare case when a random control is required, it’s a quick scan of five items by a regular employee;
6. My daughters love playing cashier.

I still use the regular checkout most of the time.

2 years later only 2 people work there