It's absolutely universal here - rare to find any supermarket with a staff-operated till. Am finding it increasingly annoying, especially given the frequency with which something goes awry with the scanning process (then it flashes a message saying 'someone is coming to help you' - which is a lie, as nobody ever comes, as there are far too few staff to cope with the constantly malfunctioning machines - you have to go and find someone).
And, as it has apparently led to an epidemic of shop-lifting, now they are adding security gates at the exit, requiring you to scan your receipt before they will let you leave.
And all this has occurred simultaneously with huge inflation and all the prices going up. So you are paying more for much worse service. You'd think the staff reductions the tech leads to would produce savings that would be passed on to customers - but not a bit of it.
Technology _always_ gets used to benefit those with power in society at everyone else's expense. The Luddites absolutely had a point.
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