I came here to paste that quote. It sounds like a disaster of poor HCI around not-ready-for-prime-time tech implementation. That's not even a great PoC demo to get funding, much less deploy into production.
Maybe they were emboldened because many companies still can't even do decades-old UPC barcode scanner self-checkouts well?
The closest self-checkout to working reasonably well I see regularly would be at Whole Foods Market, at least just using the low-tech UPC and scale. I only have a few nits about it.
(Though, within the last week, the usual duct-taped-on off-the-shelf hand scanner apparently saw the wrong barcode on the front of the product label (yes, some brand did that), which wedged the station, and the employee who came over seemed like they might think I was trying to defraud the store. I've coded for a few of those scanners before, and they provide a mix of automagical easy high-value behavior and major pitfalls. There are a few kinds of interfaces, and a large fleet of settings, and you really have to wrestle the device to the ground, to make every scenario bulletproof. If the integrator wasn't careful, for some of them, you can even reprogram or brick them with an in-band barcode, and disabling this feature is buried among the numerous settings.)
The worst self-checkout I'm currently exposed to is the dumpster-fire of a major chain, which goes out of its way to fill the UI with garbage, and then doesn't do even basic sensing and state flow right. They really need to look at WFM design, and then go even further in that direction, and get the state model right. While making sure that no one's bonus is tied to garbage and dark patterns on the screen.
(Also, for return customers who nope right out of the self-checkout headache, and go to the human checkout, or get directed to it by the attendant who's glaring at all the self-checkouts, they need clean their CC terminal keypad that's visibly caked with crud, like maybe it hasn't been disinfected in a year. Especially since they mandate repeated use of it when it should default to working with just a card tap/swipe, for a high-traffic location for many sick people.)