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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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(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday September 19 2016, @08:57PM
I love self-checkouts. I don't know why everyone else seems to have such a problem with them, but if they're available, I almost always use them. They're usually less occupied than the human-cashier lines (because too many people don't like using them), and if you know what you're doing they're quite fast. The exception, I've found, is hardware stores if you're buying anything weirdly-sized. If you're just getting a few items that have clear UPS codes on them and will fit on the scale, no problem. If you're getting lumber or bags of topsoil or other "weird" stuff that won't fit in a grocery bag or otherwise on the scale, forget it; just go to a human cashier. But for places like Walmart, self-checkouts are a godsend, especially at Walmart since so many of the customers are incredibly slow.
YMMV, however; not all checkout systems are the same, and if they're poorly maintained (the scanner glass is dirty or scratched up for instance) then it might not be worth it.