The thing is you’re distributing that time onto a lot of people. Instead of a person having to sit at the register 24/7 now people spend 1 minute longer at the store because they have to scan stuff themselves, which is negligible. In fact, you’re (or at least I am) almost always faster at shopping because now you don’t need to wait for a register to open up. Now you have an entire human being that’s free to do something else.
Another important fact is that for me at least the difference between when a cashier checks out goods for me and when I do it is maybe 30%, which again doesn’t count the fact that you don’t have to wait for a free cash register or the wait is much shorter most of the time.
Another thing it helps with is when you have a grandma fidling with her coins trying to find exact change for 5 minutes blocking everyone behind her. You can just go to a different self checkout instead of waiting for the single open till to free up.
The thing is you’re distributing that time onto a lot of people. Instead of a person having to sit at the register 24/7 now people spend 1 minute longer at the store because they have to scan stuff themselves, which is negligible. In fact, you’re (or at least I am) almost always faster at shopping because now you don’t need to wait for a register to open up. Now you have an entire human being that’s free to do something else.
Another important fact is that for me at least the difference between when a cashier checks out goods for me and when I do it is maybe 30%, which again doesn’t count the fact that you don’t have to wait for a free cash register or the wait is much shorter most of the time.
Another thing it helps with is when you have a grandma fidling with her coins trying to find exact change for 5 minutes blocking everyone behind her. You can just go to a different self checkout instead of waiting for the single open till to free up.