I love the voice change, it makes it sound like it's saying the item with massive air quotes so suddenly everything sounds like a euphemism for something terrible
The one near me just says "please place your ITEM in the bagging area" for everything. Everything is just "item" and it says "item" is in a different voice that's louder than the rest of the sentence. What.
Exactly, I've worked checkout and the only time I cared or even paid attention to what someone was getting was when family or friends went through my line
Reminds me of when, much younger, my wife was going into a store to grab pregnancy tests. She was very shy about it but quickly grabbed them, played it off cool with the cashier and left. When she got home, I had to point out the error she made in her haste: instead of pregnancy tests, they were tests for vaginal bacteria!
Not only did she boldly look the cashier in the eye, she was ultimately saying "oh ya, you know it stinks down there and I will not be ashamed". Which good on her except she was so embarrassed when she found out.
(Real talk though, no shame of you do need to test your pH down there, or doing a bit of family planning)
That's my biggest problem with self-checkouts. There's always a weird payment service provider behind them who wants to share whatever they can with their 3621 partners. I guess the same is true when you use anything but cash, including card payments at regular tills, but at least they give you the option to pay with cash. Self-checkouts usually don't (but a few do!).
I recently went to the grocery store and before I started scanning at the self-checkout, I realized someone else had scanned a box of “Men’s libido max” pills and apparently left as it required ID or something to buy, and I guess they didn’t want to look someone in the face and buy it.
So then I had to look someone in the face while they cleared it from the register, probably thinking that I was the one who had the change of heart.
Yes, people get embarrassed when buying things for common human conditions and events all the time. There are even commonly shared jokes about it, like this comic.