As my luck would have it, I was stuck in the longest line inside the Monterey Park Costco when I visited last week.

Shoppers in the self-checkout queue varied from those with carts jam packed with 20 to 30 items, to flatbed carts loaded with 72-inch television screens along with a random dude waiting to pay for a single rotisserie chicken.

The chaos of the self-checkout line is real, not just at Costco but in supermarkets, retail outlets and stores throughout Southern California.

Long Beach is trying to do something about it by recently adopting an ordinance to regulate self-checkout lanes, primarily to curtail shoplifting, as detailed by my colleague Caroline Petrow-Cohen .

Many employees are in favor of the new standards, most store owners are not and shoppers generally seem conf

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