Let's face it Home Depot is garbage. From my experience they fail completely when at the store (employees running away from you, ignoring you, trying to avoid being asked for help, etc). The store, the way it's setup, tries to agressively cut corners. (The default for checking out is self checkout)
I went to menards and I found the experience really rewarding. It's great. They're not a great company ecologically, labor rights, etc. However, 95% of the time I have a good experience when asking for help and with the prices.
FWIW I just ordered a bunch of shit from home depot, it arrived faster than amazon could deliver it and everything I was looking for was in stock. I've also never had any major complaints in person with unhelpful staff—just the opposite. My only gripe with them is the self checkout you mentioned (why am I doing the store's work for them?), which certainly is not going to improve if Amazon moves into the retail space.
I have no clue where this impression of competence on Amazon's behalf is coming from—I must simply have radically different luck with the service they provide.
Perhaps it's different with a store like Home Depot where products are much bigger and perhaps harder to scan, but do people actually dislike self checkouts?
"Doing the work for the store" seems like such a non-argument to me. I would much prefer to scan things myself as I feel I can often do it faster, and I don't have to wait in a line if the store only has two cashiers staffed at a certain time.
You pump your own gas. Why is checking yourself out so much more controversial?
One possible reason is that eliminates a whole category of unskilled labor? (full disclosure, writing this from Oregon, where we can't pump our own gas to preserve another category of unskilled labor jobs - except right now, thanks COVID-19?) I personally would probably prefer to have a human checker for that reason, I don't notice much improvement in speed or ease of checking out when I do it myself, there's just a line for the self-checkouts instead...
The "pro desk," garden center, and the returns desk are all places where I am able to have someone check me out. As you said, I don't work for Home Depot. However if you're getting penny clearance items the self checkout is the place to visit.
They used to hire people with actual experience in the building trades as well as regular store clerk types. The store clerks launched a lawsuit saying they were being discriminated against, and won. This was basically the end of being able to attract talent from the building trades as the settlement required clerks to have the same opportunities as skilled people.
The other thing was the hiring of the guy who used to run Burger King, who put the final nail in the coffin.
They used to be good, but now it's worse than useless. The staff has become less knowledgeable over time and the quality of the products sold have gone way downhill.
I usually now seek out specialty places that deal with just one part of the problems Home Depot and Lowes addresses like looking for a plumbing supply place that actual professional plumbers would use.
There should always be a register open, it's company policy for a cashier to be at a register at all times (at least with the most recent setup). Some people like self, others hate it. In the end, though, it's about which cashiers are on duty, and I'm sure you're aware quality can vary widely.
I went to menards and I found the experience really rewarding. It's great. They're not a great company ecologically, labor rights, etc. However, 95% of the time I have a good experience when asking for help and with the prices.