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Checkout at the Walmart in town used to be great. There was a corral of 15 self checkout stations, manned by one or two employees. There was usually a line, but it always moved fast because it was nearly impossible for individual slow customers to slow it down for everyone.
This was far too convenient and efficient, so naturally they replaced it with multiple lines of 4 stations, each manned by one employee. (1/3)
The new Walmart checkout lines were more confusing, because it wasn't clear if you were queuing for the group of 4 checkouts, or for each individual checkout in the line. Either way, slowdowns were much more common because of the reduced number of slots. And of course, they now had more employees covering the same number of customers they did before.
But it was at least better than the perennial alternative, which was to wait in line for 20 minutes at one of the staffed checkout lines... (2/3)
As I predicted at the time, lately Walmart has solved this problem by... no longer staffing the self checkout lines. Have fun picking the right staffed checkout line which might not take an hour to get through!
Oh, and employees will not bag your items if you brought reusable bags.
Actually, they DO still keep self-checkout stations open. Specifically, a line of 4 stations reserved for Walmart Super Premium Plus+ membership, where you pay for the privilege to shop™. (3/3)
@lnxw37a2 The assistance aspect didn't seem to slow down the overall experience for me, but yeah, the 1 or 2 employees always seemed to be helping people, so if you happened to need help yourself, it was often a small wait.
This may be lessened here in California because CA does not allow for alcohol purchases in self-checkout (which is moderately stupid), so the employees aren't doing ID check lockout overrides for people buying beer.