Dave5

Self-checkout is one of those consensual hallucinations that you see in tech a lot. People see a leader implement it and then follow like sheep… “no one gets fired for buying IBM”. In the US these machines can lead to really dire legal trouble if you get pinged for theft.

“It hasn’t delivered anything that it promises,” says Christopher Andrews, associate professor and chair of sociology at Drew University, US, and author of The Overworked Consumer: Self-Checkouts, Supermarkets, and the Do-It-Yourself Economy. “Stores saw this as the next frontier… If they could get the consumer to think that [self-checkout] was a preferable way to shop, then they could cut labour costs. But they’re finding that people need help doing it, or that they’ll steal stuff. They ended up realising that they’re not saving money, they’re losing money.”

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20240111-it-hasnt-delivered-the-spectacular-failure-of-self-checkout-technology