I never really got the (E: thanks froztbyte, I meant user complaints here, there certainly are job complaints re self-checkout see reply below) complaints of self checkout, works great in most places in .nl I tried it.
And then the local Lidl got a self checkout. I now get why people hate those things, somebody really designed it with the idea of 'people in our stores are criminals we must catch' in mind. Turns out those styles of self checkouts are more common in EE as well. A small example of a problem with it. The part where you in other self checkouts would put your bag to put your stuff into was a scale, and because of that I couldn't put my bag there as I thought I was trying to sneak products through, and every item had to be placed there on the scale after weighing. (And then it didn't always work correctly). You could almost smell the security person who designed it going 'im gonna catch all those baddies!' (that could have also been me, I need to remember to wash my clothes). The machine also felt cheap, and the way the employees had to interact with it (they had to physically touch the machine with some key, and not use a tablet like all the other self checkouts (I had gotten something with alcohol in it)) didn't help this feeling.
Moral of the story, there are ways to do self checkout better than others.