My wife organizes the belt at the checkout in the order she wants it bagged, and it seems to work pretty well. I do no such thing and I don't fully understand how she does it. Some of our senior discounts don't work on the self check out lines unless you summon a helper over to put in the code, which kinda defeats the purpose of checking yourself out.
I've always organized my stuff on the belt, too. When you were raised (and worked) in the days before electronic registers, if something was 3/$1, you put all 3 together. Kroger has this weird thing in the self-checkout that when you use coupons, you scan them and then get the person overseeing that area to come take them from you and they enter a code so you can finish the transaction. The people never look to make sure you gave them every coupon you scanned, so you could always use those coupons a second time.
Wife also puts the frozen stuff together so that goes into freezers, the refrig stuff is together, the pantry items are together, etc. just as I assume you do as you do a self-check out.
I mentioned before that I do not like to stand in line particularly because I am a jinx. I mean, it HAS to be me because I can watch the cashiers do what they do with precision and speed and people are being processed with little effort but then it’s when I get in the line that something inevitably happens. it is because I am in that line that the card reader goes berserk or the person in front of me with a gazillion bucks worth of goods wants to write a check but forgot her I.D. Many are the times when it’s just about my turn to be checked out and it turns out that the cashier’s best friend is in front of me and they both decide it’s time to catch up on the latest gossip. When I enter a line, someone ahead of me who is half finished getting checked out will go “oops, I forgot to get something” and will make everyone wait whilst she runs through the store to find her brand of yogurt. Yup, it is I who makes the cashier go from a well wishing happy faced helpful individual to a vengeful head spinning demon even though I was just thinking about getting in behind a half dozen other carts in her line. So yeah, whenever I can, I use the self checkout but even with that I have to remember the one time I got all done with checking my items just to find out that because of the pandemic, the self checkout machines could no longer take cash. Other than that, I can safely say I’m doing everyone a favor by my using the self checkout machines so everyone else in those cashiers lines will have a smooth and quick checkout time.
Me: "I'd like to lodge a complaint about my experience here today. The cashier was rude and slow." Manager: "Which register, Sir?" Me: "Self checkout."
More truth to that than fiction. My first time using self checkout warranted a bit of instruction when it came time to pay. I didn’t want to leave the register so I held up my hand to get the attention of the self checkout overlord and he acted as though it was somehow a duty beneath his station in life by acknowledging me. Since I do most assuredly dislike a slovenly attitude from people in the people business, I tightened him up a little by asking him if he wanted my money or not in a voice that I’m sure could be heard by more than just his ears.
I do use them if I don't have a lot. It's more convenient for me, but I make sure that everything is rung up correctly as I don't want to be tackled for shoplifting as I leave the store.
When at a checkout, I sometimes notice how a customer in front of us will pay. Sometimes a little shocking to see cash or check whipped out to pay, when most customers will use their bank card to pay.