Now I don't know about American cashiers but over here they're faster, waiting in line is generally faster, unless you're literally only buying three items. It's just better optimised overall: Waiting time is often cut to practically zero because you're arranging items on the belt while you're technically waiting, they're faster ringing up, and while they're doing that you can already pack so the second they're done you can pay and fuck off.

My neighbourhood supermarket has three self-checkouts, most of the time noone is using them because the one open register is always faster. In peak times they open a second one you might, in principle, find a window between that and the line of the first one becoming longer where self-checkout is faster, but I won't even consider it with a full backpack of shopping. Peak times directly before a weekend, or worse holidays are where the self-checkouts actually see use, as in you might even see someone waiting for one to be free.

Also you can't self-checkout best-before rebate stickers so there's that.

I just get that stuff for pickup.

Yeah I've done self-checkout a lot when picking up five or six items, and it works fine. Having done it for a f'real grocery run at a Wal-Mart once...if it had one of those conveyor belts where you could put all your items, then let you check out, bag and put in your cart, it would work. But you end up with a cart half full of unscanned things and half full of bags.

Giant Eagle stores in Pittsburgh have self checkouts connected to a full size conveyor belt. Kinda like a normal cashier, but the belt is after the scanner kiosk, not before it. That way you could scan a ton of stuff and have it move out of the way on it's own.

The rest of that company did dumb stuff, but the scanners were smart!