Self

I am no expert, but my view of retail managers and executives is "cutting labor costs" is the one thing they are empowered to do and they will do it any way they can no matter how expensive or counterproductive it is.

Many retail companies have invested millions – if not billions – of dollars in self-checkout technology, which Andrews says was first developed during the 1980s, and started appearing in stores in the 1990s. They're not exactly cheap to get into stores: some experts estimate a four-kiosk system can run six figures.

Despite the cost to install them, many retailers are reversing course on the tech. Target, for instance, is restricting the number of items self-checkout customers can purchase at one time. Walmart has removed some self-checkout kiosks in certain stores to deter theft. In the UK, supermarket chain Booths has also cut down on the number of self-service kiosks in its stores, as customers say they're slow and unreliable.

There are a lot of issues here: purchase and maintenance costs are high, theft (deliberate and inadvertent) is an obvious problem, customers are not trained scanners so they will be slow and need help, liquor and other "secure" items (local laws apply) require staff, the scanning systems themselves are finnicky especially when fraud prevention measures are increased, etc.

As with almost all customer service automation, it's one thing to have it be an option, and it's quite another to have it be essentially the only option by making human workers difficult or impossible to access.