I’m gonna be honest, I fucking hate standard checkout. They are slow, there’s always a line and usually only 1 in 4 checkouts is open, at least that’s like it where I live. I know in the US there are like a thousand people working at checkouts and people use the cashiers as therapists or whatever, but that’s not it where I live. Usually self checkouts occupy 1/4 of the space, or even less, than a normal checkout, are faster and are always open.
Even better, where I live they’ve started implementing mobile scanners that you pick up when you enter the store, scan stuff as you go, and then checkout in literally 10 seconds. Just walk up to the self checkout machine, scan the special barcode and pay. There may be random checks where you need to go through a standard checkout and confirm the self scan. I believe they use an algorithm where, if your scans are usually correct, you get less and less random checks, until it’s basically none (or the opposite).
In the main supermarket where I live there are, iirc, 44-46 checkouts in total. 14 are standard checkouts, usually 6 or so open, then there are like 12 or so self checkouts and like 18 self scan checkouts. The standard checkouts occupy more than twice the space as all the others while doing a fraction of the throughput.
BTW, I believe the discount is the time I don’t have to wait in line. If you also want to sneak out something though, you do you, couldn’t care less, it’s not like you are stealing from the poor.