This just them whining. One person watching the door (that they had anyway) and one person assisting at a self checkout corral is still less employees than all the cashier's I've seen them do away with.
yeah it's wild to think about, but i don't think i've been in a grocery store in years that had more checkout lanes open than closed. most of the time it's no more than 2. i'm assuming that if they were still building new stores they'd just get rid of them altogether.
It's weird, I felt this was a trend pre-pandemic (and at least it made sense in the off-hours) but after it really kicked into gear. I almost never see more than 2 checkout lanes staffed at any one time.
You still have to have them for the big holiday rushes, but that's pretty much the only time working at a grocery store that I've seen all of them used