[amalcon]

The cashier has three jobs:

- Prevent theft

- Keep track of what's specifically been sold, to help determine re-ordering schedules

- Sometimes, put things in bags. Some stores just ask the customer to do this even if they have a cashier.

The thing about physically moving products over a barcode scanner is only for those first two purposes. Mostly the first -- if theft weren't an issue, it would be cheaper to just do manual inventory more frequently.

The customer is not preventing theft. They (mostly) aren't stealing, but they also aren't deterring anyone from stealing. The lone employee for the eight self-checkout kiosks is doing that -- with the help of scales, cameras, and (these days) a little bit of AI.