Yeah, I really don’t understand what changed or why. By the time I was in high school, pretty much everyone had a cell phone, but they’d get confiscated if they went off in class or we were caught using them during school hours, and that included all break periods. I remember a teacher threatening to take my phone away when I was using my phone to call my dad for a ride home after I had finished my exams for the day. For high school kids, I could see arguments on both sides for whether they should be allowed during breaks, but definitely not during class periods.
Things were a little more flexible in college, but they were still expected to be silent, and some professors would ask you to leave the class if your phone went off or was otherwise causing a distraction.
Hahaha. Humans are so silly! My preference is the exact opposite of yours, but the reasoning behind my preference is the same. I strongly prefer a cashier over self checkout because I prefer to bag my own stuff, and find it easier to do that while someone else scans.
Very few of the places I shop lately even have a bagger, so I don’t usually have to ask anyone not to help. I find most self checkouts frustrating because there’s no space for scanned items to sit before bagging them.
I also usually plop my card down on the card reader once the cashier starts scanning, so I don’t have to bounce back and forth between bagging & paying.