I (and other people) take a full cart through when the self checkouts are the only ones open. Asking at the service counter for a checkout to be opened, they just say “use the self checkout”. They don’t care if there’s a long line, or if people have to wait, so long as they can get away without paying people to run a checkout. I suspect that most supermarkets would completely do away with people at checkouts if they could.
Ugh that’s going to make all my quick runs for a single onion a pain in the ass. But I do agree that most people in self checkouts are incapable of efficiently using quick lookup. Even though it’s right there!