Some places make this stupidly difficult. Probably not an issue with plastic bags (but it might be, because of the stupid AI monitoring they all use now), but definitely an issue with boxes.

Aldi, at least when mine had them, you could put the empty boxes in the checkout area before starting and it would tare the scale. But only if you did it before starting the order. And they couldn't even accept their own gift cards at self checkout.

Costco, of all places, has no way of meaningfully using self checkout with more than a few items. You can't tare the scale at all.

Like, jesus christ, you can put the bags down FIRST and then put the items INSIDE THE BAG as ONE step.
How did humanity get to this point.

People have been conditioned. Literally Pavlovian conditioned. We have been made to feel pain in a response to a behavior. That pain?

UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA

When you've been yelled at enough by a machine just for putting your own bags in the "bagging area", eventually it just becomes natural to bag your groceries after you've paid for them. Once the store has your money, they don't care what happens to your items. But up until you've paid the bill, the items may be watched like a hawk. And anything their automated vision system thinks looks a bit funny can get flagged. Sometimes machines are poorly designed or calibrated, and it flags your bags as something suspicious in the bagging area. Then not only do you get yelled at, but the whole system may be locked up for however many minutes it takes to get the self-checkout attendant over there.