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Efficiencies in Supermarket Checkout Lines

posted by martyb on Sunday September 18 2016, @04:56PM   Printer-friendly
from the slowest-line-is-the-one-I'm-in dept.

Appalbarry writes:

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reports on a former math teacher who claims to solved the question "Which checkout line up will be fastest?"

In a nutshell he has concluded that the number of people in the lineup is more important than the number of items a person has in their cart.

The critical factor, he says, is the average of 41 seconds that it takes a shopper to pay the cashier and engage in idle chit chat.

So a long line of people in the Express line, with two or three items each, will actual move slower than the checkout with one guy with a full shopping cart.

YMMV.

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  • (Score: 2) by t-3 on Monday September 19 2016, @01:44AM

    by t-3 (4907) on Monday September 19 2016, @01:44AM (#403579)

    The shitty fucking scanner. Anyone who has ever worked as a cashier and then tried to use one of those inevitably ends up frustrated. They are crippled, apparently to prevent theft, but do nothing to prevent theft. Using a real register it would probably take me 30 seconds - 1 minute to scan, bag and pay for almost any order except the very largest or smallest purchases. Using those crippled POSs it takes about 30 seconds per item because they suck.

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  • (Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Monday September 19 2016, @09:43AM

    by opinionated_science (4031) on Monday September 19 2016, @09:43AM (#403661)

    perhaps all packaging should be generic? Nice an geometrical and marketing in a fixed place.

    Hence all things would be easily scanned by machine...;-)

  • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday September 19 2016, @10:24AM

    by TheRaven (270) on Monday September 19 2016, @10:24AM (#403668) Journal
    Waitrose (upmarket supermarket in the UK) has a really good set of these. They actually have two modes. One lets you take the scanner around the shop with you and just pay at the end. In this mode, you'll periodically be asked to have a store clerk check your purchases (which is pretty quick). This happens with decreasing frequency over time (unless they find some errors, then the probability goes up). The other mode is much like other shops, except the self-service checkouts don't have scales to weigh the things that you're buying. They observed that people who are intentionally shoplifting will probably hide things in bags / clothes and so the scales don't really address the threat model, but do slow down throughput and reduce customer satisfaction (both of which correlate with decreased customer spending).
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