.For shoppers, self-checkout was meant to be quick and easy. Retailers hoped it would save them money hiring staff. Their idea: why pay six staff when you could spend one to watch customers at self-service tills, as they do their work of scanning and packing for free?

However, it looks like the whole thing backfired because while the technology was not that bad, the humans using it were hopeless.

Customers are still lining up. They need store staff to help fix kiosk errors or check their IDs for age-limited items. Stores still need workers to help them and look after the machines.

In a 2021 survey of 1,000 American shoppers, 60 per cent of consumers said they prefer to use self-checkout over a staffed checkout aisle when given the choice, yet 67 per cent of consumers claim to have had the technology fail while trying to use it.

Drew University Associate Professor of Sociology Christopher Andrews said that the tech had not given anything it promised.

"Stores saw this as the next big thing. They could cut staff costs by making the shopper think that [self-checkout] was a better way to shop. But they're finding that people need help doing it or that they'll nick stuff. They realised that they're not making money; they're losing money."

Dollar General, one of the fastest-growing shops in the US, is changing its mind. In 2022, the cheap chain went big on self-checkout tech - it's normal to see only one or two staff in a whole Dollar General shop in some places. But after spending money, they plan to have more staff in shops "and especially, the checkout area", says the firm's boss, Todd Vasos.

"We had trusted and started to trust too much this year on self-checkout in our shops," he said during the firm's third quarter 2023 earnings chat on 7 December 2023. "We should be using self-checkout as a backup checkout option, not a main one,"  he said.