Ringing up a basket of shopping

The scanning and the taking of payment are solved, which is why this looked settled for twenty years. What is not solved is the rest of the checkout: loose fruit that has to be identified, age checks, a card that fails, a customer who needs help, and losses that rise when nobody is watching. Booths said service got faster and shrinkage fell after it put staff back behind the tills. Amazon's camera system needed people reviewing footage offsite, which is displacement rather than automation. The honest reading is that the labour of scanning has moved onto the customer, and that a person is still standing there for the cases the machine cannot close.