Huh, I always thought it was the opposite: If you're in a hurry, you go through traditional check-out. Nothing really matches the speed of an experienced and trained grocery store checkout clerk whizzing boxes past the scanner faster than you can load them into your cart. I think traditional checkout can blaze through 30 grocery items before I can even get three or four out of my cart, fumble around with them in front of the scanners, and then get chastised and stopped by the computer because I didn't place the item properly on the shelf next to the checkout machine.
There are 4-12 self-checkout kiosks and the loads there tend to be smaller. So the line moves. Speed of checkout once you reach the clerk in a traditional lane, hands-down faster than self.
I've seen liquor stores that handle alcohol sales through self-checkout without friction. They don't check IDs 99% of the time, which I suspect could get them in some trouble, but instead the monitoring employee basically looks at you and makes a judgement call on your age and if you're clearly not a child they approve it before you're even done scanning.
Polish Lidl works like that. You self-checkout alcohol and some store employee gets notified. They look at you and approve remotely. If you scan alcohol first, they will likely do that before you finish checkout and there is no waiting involved.
Huh, I always thought it was the opposite: If you're in a hurry, you go through traditional check-out. Nothing really matches the speed of an experienced and trained grocery store checkout clerk whizzing boxes past the scanner faster than you can load them into your cart. I think traditional checkout can blaze through 30 grocery items before I can even get three or four out of my cart, fumble around with them in front of the scanners, and then get chastised and stopped by the computer because I didn't place the item properly on the shelf next to the checkout machine.