For a lot of customers, self-checkout has turned into one more small annoyance in a trip that already feels like work. You’ve got to scan your own items, bag them yourself, and hope nothing freezes halfway through. That frustration was already simmering, but now it looks like things are about to get a lot louder.
The New York City Council is considering a bill that would limit self-checkout purchases to 15 items or fewer at supermarkets and pharmacies. At some Walmart locations, shoppers have already reported a stricter 12-item cap.
It’s worth noting that the proposed legislation has been referred to the Council’s Committee on Consumer and Worker Protection but has not yet had public hearings, committee approval, a full Council vote, nor has it been signed by the mayor.
The $100 Billion Problem
The reasoning behind the bill is retail theft, along with stronger staffing requirements around self-checkout. Retail shrinkage runs the industry around $100 billion a year. Smaller transactions are easier to monitor. Councilmember Amanda Farias, who introduced the New York legislation, has emphasized that the measures will help preserve retail jobs by increasing oversight and safety.
The proposed bill would require at least one employee to supervise self-checkout whenever it is operating, and stores with four or more kiosks would have to maintain a ratio of one employee for every three kiosks. Civil penalties would start at $100 per employee at the location and rise for each day a violation remains uncured.
What the legislation may not solve is the lane problem. Fewer self-checkout spots means more people in staffed checkout lines, which at most stores are already short on staff. That’s where most of the anger is coming from.
In one widely shared complaint, a Walmart shopper said she was “so mad” after being stopped at self-checkout for going just over a store limit, only to have her entire transaction canceled and be told to start over in a staffed lane. Reddit threads around similar Walmart limits tell the same story in rougher, less filtered language: longer waits, backed-up lanes, repeat trips, and customers saying the whole point of self-checkout disappears once a quick errand turns into a line problem.
The U.S. Sun also rounded up complaints from shoppers saying their stores had shifted self-checkout to “12 or less express” while only two regular lanes were open, and the lines were “through aisles.”
That frustration has been building across the same Walmart checkout changes we’ve already been tracking. From stores where self-checkout lanes were reduced or removed to locations at the center of the company’s self-checkout reversal.
What this latest change adds is the customer end of that story. When fewer shoppers can use self-checkout, the strain does not vanish but simply shows up as longer waits, tighter lane access, and more visible irritation at the front of the store.
Target and Costco Join In
Target tested a 10-item limit in a few hundred stores in 2023 and rolled it out nationwide the following year. Costco is also caught up in the New York proposal.
The loudest response so far has been the cart walkout threat—load up, hit the limit, and leave everything in the aisle on the way out. Whether that actually happens at scale is another question. The frustration behind it is real enough.
Councilwoman Farias called the limits a matter of fairness and accountability at checkout. The shoppers posting about 30 checkout lanes with two employees running them have a different word for it.
Sources: NYC Council Legistar, The Independent, The Sun