I don't like self-checkout machines. Not the ones I've tried, at least. It's slow, laggy and the machine sounds awfully smug. Plus, it's fifty-fifty if the damned things accept cash these days. The normal tills almost always do. And they still have to have someone hover around you, looking over your shoulder, while the machine goes "HANG THE BAG IN THE HOLDER TO YOUR RIGHT!!", which you did quite some time ago.
Of course, there's a lot less drawbacks, comparatively. The cashiers here don't pack your bags, they send it along the belt and leave it to you. Which is better, because I'd rather take my chances and pack it myself. It's really odd, to me, that idea of the cashier packing your bag. Why? I'm a lot more particular about getting my eggs back home than they are.
They aren't very chatty, beyond politeness, which I like. It's a managable amount of chit-chat. It's hopeless to buy tobacco in the supermarket, though. They're always either out, or there's only toothpaste flavoured cigs left. Or they've got this odd thing that they sell you a bit of paper with a barcode, that you pop into a special vending machine outside. That's where all the naughty things live, like cigarettes, condoms, snus, pregnancy tests... It's like they were too wild and disorderly to keep near the till, so they got locked up in a special box.