The mistake here is in assuming that it's either all or nothing; that self checkouts are either great, or some kind of disaster.

The reality is that they're great for some applications, but suck ass for others.

Here's the deal; if it's just me with a few items, yeah, the self-checkout is awesome, but if it's me and my wife and we have a shitload of groceries for the entire family, guess what? Self-checkout sucks ass and it's way easier to go through a regular checkout stand where there won't be a hundred little different ways for the system to get jammed up and require an employee intervention.

What part about this do people not understand?

I have to think that a lot of the hostility to regular checkout stands comes from relatively young Lemmy users who don't actually have to shop for families of their own.