I’ve come across the same things in most of my travels. The worst incarnation I’ve seen of self check outs are the camera based self checkouts I’ve seen at some Circle K gas stations in the South West of the US.

I think they are too far of a jump for most normal consumers to understand. They use cameras so one can place all the items on the scan surface and it tries to calculate everything at once. Most people including myself try to scan things one at a time and it doesn’t work like that as it tries to do it all at once. Eventually store staff then need to come over to help every customer or they just ring up customers in a traditional way over at the main till. In these situations I don’t have enough cashier training to use these machines so I avoid them.

I love tech most of the time but I don’t enjoy when tech tries to leap frog over a couple of generations than the public can handle. In these situations have staff to take customer’s money. Websites dedicate resources to remove barriers to buying on a website. Why are brick and mortars adding barriers with each passing year?

Nothing grinds my gears more than having to line up and wait a long time to spend my money. I think there are some focusing too closely on the numbers and not the larger picture.