I prefer self check out when I only have a few items, like so few I just carry them in my hand and don't bother with a basket, cart, buggy or whatever else the call it around the world. When I'm doing my "big shopping" and getting a week or two worth of groceries then self checkout is terrible. It slows the whole process down as I can't simultaneously unload the cart, scan, bag and reload the cart by myself.
Not too long ago there was a chain of grocery stores in our area where the employees went on strike for higher wages. My kids saw this and started asking a bunch of questions. So I went through the dynamics of running a business and how an employee costs more than just their wage. I also went through the concepts of minimum wage and cost of living. Even though I have my own biases in this matter I tried to give them a complete, even handed explanation for all of this. They were left somewhat confused because they could empathize with the different sides and that made it hard to find a solution. I then threw in the idea of automation, the cost of self checkout machines is going down and the technology behind robots is improving. Right now it's cheaper/easier to have humans doing this work but that can change.
The strike ended and the store employees went back to work. But within a few months the number of self checkouts was increased and now outnumber the non self checkouts. We also saw an autonomous floor cleaner moving itself up and down the aisles doing the sweeping and cleaning a human used to do.
