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posted by
martyb
on Sunday September 18 2016, @04:56PM
from the slowest-line-is-the-one-I'm-in dept.
from the slowest-line-is-the-one-I'm-in dept.
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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Efficiencies in Supermarket Checkout Lines
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real fast and freak everybody out.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 19 2016, @02:56PM
i used to be a cashier for sam's club.
wal-mart policy (they train the COS to do this) purposefully puts the slowest cashiers on the express lane. the intent is to keep all lanes moving at the same speed. this only applies to wal-mart stores though; sam's club doesn't do this, and smarter COSes might not.
COS is also supposed to watch the lines progress, and direct members to lines to keep things moving. not all of them actually do this as aggressively as they should; wal-mart COS are definitely not as good at it.
a strange thing occurs though. people tend not to get in lines if there is nobody in that line. if you are open, people will ignore you if your line is open; most will go to the overfull line next to you. the COS is supposed to direct people to your line to get it started, but cashiers (at sam's anyway) are trained to actually go and "poach" members from other lines if theirs is empty. in practice most are not that proactive though i did it all the time.
however, this strange thing with people preferring non-empty lines, i see it everywhere now that i noticed. i even see it at tollbooths and stuff. people are less rational than they think they are.
one thing that really kills me - as a sam's club cashier, it was not unusual to be dealing with 100-800 dollars in cash. i got very good at counting it very fast, and doing change fast, and (if necessary) counting it such that it was hard to argue with how i did it or where the money is (some wiseguys would insist you just pocketed their money, etc). now whenever i use cash, i have to practically restrain myself, cashiers are so slow- i want to jump over the counter, do it for them! i assume they don't get much practice these days.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday September 19 2016, @09:09PM
however, this strange thing with people preferring non-empty lines, i see it everywhere now that i noticed. i even see it at tollbooths and stuff. people are less rational than they think they are.
It's classic herd behavior. Humans are herd animals, and it explains a lot of their behavior.
It'd be really interesting to do some kind of scientific study, picking out people who don't exhibit this behavior (preferring non-empty lines) and then examining these people in greater detail.