You transport yourself to the store, walk around the store, pick the items up off the shelf, take them around the store, take them with you to checkout, take them to your car, bring them into your house, and put them away. But moving the item 36 inches from your basket to your bag is something you're too enfeebled or important to do yourself?
Sorry man but what do get out of that extra effort how ever small it is, "oh no I'm going to wait a bit longer while I'm on my phone", maybe it's because in from a small town and such things are pretty recent but they just feels like there's dishonest about them
They're way, way, way faster for me and funny enough at the same time I have peace of mind in that the person next in line isn't breathing down my neck while I'm putting stuff in my backpack.
These things are so they don’t have to pay people to check out your groceries anymore. There’s not much convenience in them when you’re buying produce and have to go through multiple pages to find the item you’re scanning in or god forbid the barcode doesn’t read or put something in the bagging area too quickly and then you have to stand there looking stupid while an employee comes over to help you because the machine encountered an error and won’t let you continue scanning your stuff.
Sometimes that’s all they have open (Home Depot) so you do have to go to them. If these companies can save a buck by having you ring yourself up, they will.