In the US, grocery worker jobs are some of the only blue-collar jobs left that still provide a middle-class income with benefits. There are lots of people for whom getting one of these jobs is something to aspire towards, not some terrible fate to dread.

This has a lot to do with the fact that grocery workers are better unionized that most -- 19% of workers in the retail grocery industry are union members, compared to less than 7% in the private sector overall (source: https://www.gc.cuny.edu/CUNY_GC/media/CUNY-Graduate-Center/P...). Which is one of the reasons for the push towards self-checkout; it pushes those numbers down, which reduces the bargaining power the union can wield on behalf of those workers who the machines don't replace.