Yes, same in the UK. Most stores have scan as you shop, but most people do self checkout. I get the impression scan as you shop is seen as being a bit prissy.
As a German it is always a culture shock to see how popular self checkout is in the UK, even though I see it used more often recently in Germany too. I think Germany is about a decade behind...
There's a simple formula that makes you chose it: they keep as few manned checkouts open as possible, as long as the wait for the manned checkouts is inconvenient enough the majority of people will use the self-checkouts.
Wait until you see how popular it is in the US! I can't remember the last time I saw someone use a manned checkout line; my local grocery store has 1 manned lane and 12 self checkout lanes, and the manned one is almost always empty.
I actually prefer manned check-out. It tends to be much faster. The checkout people tend to be wicked fast at swiping groceries in front of those scanners, much faster than I can dig into the cart, find something, fumble around scanning it, then place it in that little post-scan cubbie---ughhhhh. And manned checkout is already parallelized: Next customer queues up groceries while current customer is being serviced.
> 1 manned lane and 12 self checkout lanes, and the manned one is almost always empty
its empty because it’s considered rude to burden the poorly paid checkout person when you can self-service. Once all of the self-service lanes are occupied, the sentiment shifts and customers uneasily queue up in the manned lane, frantically watching if the self-service lane clears up so they can jump out of the manned lane.
One of those freak cases in behavioral econ where the causality is very straightforward and explicit.
I've certainly observed what looks like that kind of behavior, but I don't personally feel rude at all for using the services of a cashier.
In my own shopping, I just use whatever seems likely to be fastest or less hassle -- for me.
If I've got a bunch of stuff, I'm heading to the cashier because they're better-equipped to handle a volume of stuff than I am at self-checkout.
But if it's just a couple of small items, then the self-checkout seems fastest: Scan, plonk, scan, plonk, invoke the incantation so that it can take my money[1], and pay it.
(Unless one of those small items involves something like beer or something else requiring an ID check, wherein: It's back to the cashier.)
[1]: In my neck of the woods, Wal-Mart gets this best, with as few as one button-pushes required to pay and leave (and there was a time when it was zero button pushes to use a debit card at self-checkout there). Dollar General gets it worst, requiring at least 8 button pushes (with three different input methods! it requires input on two different touchscreens and one physical keypad) to pay them and get on my way.
It's also a step towards individualized pricing, which many people, myself included, absolutely hate. This can be done with self-checkouts but it'll work much better with handheld scanners. Normal price: 3x, member price:2x, individualized price: scan to find out.
Big chains plan to gamblify the prices in the next few years using their "member cards" points, some chains are already up to this with specific penetration targets before they move forward. And this is not insider knowledge they're upfront about it.
