I prefer to shop where I can check my own groceries. I don't know anything about a wand.,..use a built in scanner. I like my groceries bagged a certain way. I am fast and I can get in and out in a hurry. I only hate when I have to wait on someone....usually a man who is clueless or a woman letting her kid do the scanning. Kroger here has self check, as does Walmart. I always use them when I have the option.

Our Walmarts used to have self-serve then they took them all out and replaced them with the windy/snaky line that leads to 6 checkouts.

It's only the high-end grocery chains that has self-checkouts.

A couple of years ago I was in a local grocery store picking up just 5 or 6 things, somewhat late in the evening (maybe 10 P.M.) I got to the front of the store and their were no cashiers. Only 4 self checkout lanes. I asked the manager who was standing there why no checkout lanes were open and she said the self checkout lanes are open. I said "I refused to work as a checkout clerk for money in high-school, I'm certainly not going to do it now for free." And then I just left the basket of items there next to her and walked out of the store.

You could sign my name to Marilyn's post. My Walmart had 7 or 8 self-check machines and many more checkouts manned by cashiers. I almost never have to wait to check my items out myself, but I often see lines at the cashiers. So it seems the vast majority of shoppers--at least at that store--prefer to have someone else do it.

Bob, I don't know what's behind your aversion to checking out items--your own or someone else's--but your story sounds like cutting off your nose to spite your face to me. You ended up without the items you needed. (And someone had to put them back on the shelves for you.)

I refused to work as a checkout clerk for money in high-school . . .

Wow. You sound privileged.

I use self checkout unless I am writing a check and then I go to a cashier.

Bob- Why do you think being a checkout clerk is beneath you?

I don't think he said it was beneath him, he said he'd refused to do it.

I haven't worked in retail for so many years now, I don't know the pros and cons to living breathing checkers when self check lanes are installed. I do know none of the checkers in our Safeway are given 40 hours a week, it's more like 32 hours when they would like more....at least three have complained to me in casual conversation over the months and none are close friends.

bob is not the only person who has described instances of teeing off on a stranger who was the nearest person standing by when an internal or personal issue (often having a misunderstanding or attitude problem at its core) got triggered. This is no different than shrieking at strangers making phone calls you don't want to receive. It's the height of rudeness.

Those who have made "It frosts me when......" comments are doing the same thing.

Why is it that everyone is wound so tight? What about the Golden Rule?

For the record, the family situations some of you have described in the past may make some consider, by comparison, my comfortable middle class upbringing as "privileged". (A word that is almost always used contemptuously). Whether yes or no, I spent some years in high school and in college working for spending money as a grocery clerk for a large regional chain. It wasn't an interesting job (other than the people part, which I liked) but the pay was great. It bought me a new car while still in high school, bob, and a second new car before graduating college. Not bad!

I use self check only if I have just a few items. I don't like to have so much that I need to move filled bags back to the cart before it's emptied.

Very much prefer bagging my own groceries, so I will use self checkout whenever it is available and will preferentially go to stores that offer it.

I can still barely "swipe your card", much less use the chip thing. If I went to checkout and there were only self check lanes, I would leave my cart and go home. I just got off work, I'm tired, I've still got to go home and make dinner, sort through the mail, go through the invoices and receipts husband drops on my desk, get all the data entered into our accounting software, check my emails, texts, bank and credit card accounts, look at the calendar for the next few days, check out my favorite boards, skim the newspaper, have dinner with hubby and share our days, doze off to the TV and start all over again tomorrow. Not teaching myself to scan and bag my own groceries in between all that!

If I can, I still go to the old Safeway (out of my way) to get 'Jamie' (a delightful developmentally disabled man - who's been there about 30 years) to help me out to the car and load the groceries for me.

I wand all my groceries as I shop. Never over charge myself, and I bag them in giant cloth bags which hang over the edge. I get to the checkout, swipe my card and all my purchases come up and I slide the credit card in and I'm outta there.

I love self checkout. I use regular checkout if I have a basket full of a months worth of groceries.But most of the time,I stop at the store to get some drinks or something to prepare for lunch on the way to work,and get rather irate at having to stand in line for 15 minutes to buy a handful of items. Before the local store installed the selfcheckout lanes,it never failed. I would get in the shortest line,only to discover that I would have to wait through a price check because an item didn't have a tag to scan, an argument about how much the sign said an item was,and someone writing a check. And no, it doesn't matter that the machine will fill it out for them and return the check with the amount on it for their records,they want to fill it out themselves to have the carbon copy. Cause that's how they roll. I don't dare switch lines,because by now they are lined up 20 deep,and as soon as I do,someone won't be able to get their credit or debit card to work,or they forgot something and would run off to get it. Self checkout rules.

When Target was in Canada, we had one up at the mall. At the entrance to the mall there were only self checkouts. I had a hand full of items and when I got to the check outs and saw there was only one staff member and six self checkouts, I put my stuff down and walked out. I refused to go back downstairs to the parking lot exit check outs to have my items rung in, only to have to walk back through the store to go into the mall. I absolutely refuse to use a self checkout. Pay me. Give me a discount. Or hire staff because you replaced a human (or six) with robots. And then people complain that the unemployment rate is high. Really? Use humans. Not computers.

Debby, I don't think we are going back! Many of the stores realize that automation saves them money.

Years ago, the major department stores had elevator men/ladies that wore white gloves to pull the gate and push the buttons for you.

Of course they were replaced by self service. However, there was one store and I don't remember which, that actually waited until it's elevator worker was ready to retire before changing over.

I don't often use self-checkouts in grocery stores. I rarely have to wait in long lines, so that's not a significant time savings. Often, we're including beer in our purchase so a person has to come approve that sale -- so again, not a time savings. Off the top of my head, two of the grocery stores we regularly use don't even have self-checkout (they are small, local). On the other hand, my dad, who just celebrated his 89th birthday, always uses the self-checkout. I think he likes feeling he's the master of the machine.

Bob, you need to work on the art of looking vaguely helpless in the face of an everyday problem, like an absent-minded professor. My late FIL had this down pat. People would rush to his assistance! As a woman, I get all sorts of help at home improvement stores loading heavy stuff into our truck -- if I leave my DH at home! Learn to use what works! -- lol!

The WalMarts near us (in Florida) have so few cashiers deployed, that you have to wait in line sometimes to check yourself out. But it's usually way faster than waiting for a cashier. If we have lots, we don't do it ourselves. Plus my dh seems to think it's a race and he is grabbing stuff and handing it off for me to scan like the store is on fire.

I overstated my position to the manager (and I could tell she was the manager because her name badge said "Store Manager") partly because the tone of her response seemed to be saying that I was too dim to see the four self-checkout lanes right in front of me. But the major motivation behind my actions was similar to debby_ab above. Working as a cashier or checkout clerk is a perfectly fine job, it can help high-school or college students earn enough to buy a car or live on while at college. The stores' use of self checkout lanes is a transparent attempt to have customers do work for free, that they otherwise would have to pay someone to do.

I realize that by leaving the cart right there they would have to have someone put everything back, that was the point. If enough people would refuse to reward bad behavior by companies perhaps they could be trained to stop.

It for this reason that I "shriek" at tele-marketers, yes it is rude, but it is vastly more rude to base your business on calling hundreds of people, annoying nearly all of them in the hopes of reaching that one dim, easily-duped, rube who will listen to your spiel and actually buy your company's crap. And while the callers working for the tele-marketers are "only doing their job", it is a job where they know when they take the job, that they will be annoying pretty much everyone they call. So I view it as my duty and responsibility to "shriek at" and harangue the caller, to decrease the pool of willing workers to the point where tele-marketing becomes a thing of the past.

Yes automation can be helpful and "cheaper" for the owners, but I have yet to see these savings being passed down to the consumer. We have to bring our own bags and ring up our own groceries yet prices continue to go up. I don't mind self check out and a few self check outs here and there are fine. But what is going to happen when there are no cashiers and it's all self check outs? Like a poster mentioned above this country is complaining about unemployment but replacing everyone with robots is cheaper and a good idea? I don't think people are considering what is going to happen when most of their jobs are being done by robots. Great things will be cheap! Yes but you will have no job to pay for them.

Average food cost as a percentage of personal income is down and is near a record low. So yes, you are seeing the savings in the cost of food. Part of the calculation is personal income, of course, so both are up but income is up more than food cost, which lowers the cost of food as a percentage.

My income has not gone up since the cost of living increase freeze. My pay just now went up in these past few months.