It was a head turner.

A self-checkout in the 7-Eleven at the  West Yosemite Avenue location.

It wasn’t operating on Tuesday, although clearly it looked freshly minted.

Whether it is the first self-checkout in a Manteca 7-Eleven, I honestly can’t tell you.

But after the initial reaction of “you’ve got to be kidding me”, it makes a lot of sense.

7-Eleven convenience stores stopped being convenience stores a long time ago.

It started when the State of California commissioned them as neighborhood casinos.

If you don’t play the lottery, you make it a point to avoid 7-Elevens on Wednesdays and Saturdays when jackpots become large.

It’s when play accelerates and the odds decrease.

Grab a cold drink from the refrigerated beverage area in summer when a jackpot is in excess of $100 million with four or less hours to go until the draw, and it’ll be at room temperature by the time you get to the front of the line.

What finished off any remnants of convenience was the federal regulation that a certain amount of food items had to be fresh or hot in order for an EBT card to be used at a store to buy items.

When cashiers have to assume the dual role as fast food jockeys creating the need to go between the cash register following the protocol of gloves on before handling food and then gloves off and washing hands, it can add plenty of time to a transaction.

The West Yosemite store self-checkout wasn’t up and running but it clearly stated what you couldn’t use it to buy: Lottery tickets, alcohol, money orders, and gas.

Using cash is also a no-no.

You can see where if you’re not gambling, buying a money order, purchasing gift cards, or buying tobacco the self-checkouts could be a godsend if your concept of a convenience store is a quick in and out trip and not just paying more.

But still, a self-checkout at 7-Eleven?

I mentioned it to four different people and all four had the same reaction. They laughed.

It does seem a bit of a stretch but given ever changing technologies and ever increasing employee costs it is a no-brainer.

A store owner can increase staffing without worrying about the $15.50 an hour wage going up to $16 next year, payroll costs going up proportionally, Sacramento coming up with another “anti-business” gamut such as requiring all employees regardless of the hours they work getting employer provide healthcare, or perhaps two weeks of paid vacation.

Sacramento has made it pretty clear in recent years that they won’t hesitate to mandate all sorts of costly initiatives on the back of businesses.

And now that they have decided they can act as if they are being reasonable by only conferring  the most egregious mandates on businesses that have multiple locations with no exception for pseudo mom and pop franchisee that has only one location, 7-Elevens are clearly in the crosshairs of the California Legislature.

And if you don’t think Sacramento wouldn’t hesitate to place more burdensome mandates related to employee costs on businesses, then you must be a recent arrival in California from another solar system.

I admit I’m a Johnny-Come-Lately fan of self-checkouts.

That said, it can be frustrating as heck as the seems to be no set standard on how they are designed.

The Food-4-Less self-checkout, at least for me, is user friendly compared to those at other supermarkets where the key pads to search for produce and such or more cumbersome.

Then there are the self-checkouts where the store can’t seem to be bothered to keep them in good operating condition.

It may be my timing, but rare is the trip to the Manteca Target when all four self-checkouts are working.

And you’d think if they are saving on labor costs they won’t be so chintz when it comes to the impression of “ink” on the receipts.

It is standard procedure to get receipts from all four self-checkouts in Target that you can barely read as they look like they’ve been exposed to the sun for 60 consecutive days.

And while some stores’ self-checkout can leave you wondering why they can be a pain to use, Costco sets the platinum standard.

Granted, you’re not forced to go hunting for a produce item by prompting a menu on a keypad to pop on a screen with  imagery of a dozen apple choices and then wonder whether it was  being properly weighed because at Costco such purchases — besides being large enough to feed the San Francisco 49ers offensive front line — come packaged with large SKU codes.

Speaking of SKU codes, given the almost universal scanning of products at cash registers — self-serve and otherwise — you’d think manufacturers would pay more attention placing SKU codes where they can easily by read.

Nothing is quite as much fun as wrestling with a 45-pound bag of dog food to find the SKU code and then to flatten out the packaging enough so the scanner will be able to read it.

The good news, if you consider it that, is there are less futuristic experts today who think anytime soon the manned cash register is going the way of the dodo bird.

That’s because there is a growing number of stores apparently in less than choice locales taking out self-checkout because of — surprise, surprise — heavy losses primarily by people not scanning all items they walk out with in bags they don’t pay for.

As for the future of the 7-Eleven self-checkout, it may restore the convenience aspect to the fact 7-Eleven’s roots are as a convenience store and not a cross between Domino’s Pizza and the Nevada Club in downtown Reno.

But it does deprive you of interacting with the clerks who — in the case of many regular customers — are an extension of the heydays of corner stores where small talk was part of the checkout ritual.

This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com