Q: I was surprised to find that most of the walmart stores in our area have eliminated the self-check lanes....I really liked self-check and can't figure out why they have taken them out.
A: I assume they make people more likely to steal. Since there's no cashier, going through a self-checkout definitely makes you feel like if you "forgot" to ring something through, no one would notice. And if they do, you can just pretend it was an accident and act like you were just too dumb to use the machine properly... In my city the Wal-Mart that has these still has them, but it's in a pretty wealthy area and is only accessible by car (ie if you are too poor to own a car, you can't get there!), so it probably has a pretty low incidence of theft compared to other stores.