Is the express line really faster? | Hacker News Reader

Is the express line really faster?

blog.mrmeyer.com

35 pointssnewe25 comments

Waiting in line at the grocery store is one of my greatest pet peeves. To avoid this I usually do one of 3 things:

1) Move to the lines further from the store exit. I've noticed that people tend to queue up in lines close to the exit (this is usually where the express lines are, too).

2) Use the self-checkout. At least this way I feel like the process is going as efficiently as possible because I am in control of it (plus barcode scanners fascinate me). I will only do this if there is an immediately available self-checkout station. Otherwise, it's guaranteed to take 10x longer than just waiting in a normal line (only being slightly sarcastic).

3) Go to the 24hr grocery store at 2am. No lines! (This only works because I am usually up really late coding, and it serves as a nice break.)

While I generally reserve enough time for shopping groceries so that I never need to hurry, I do exercise some preference between cashiers. It, however, isn't necessarily for the fastest route but the most pleasurable route.

My highly scientific method (=i.e. where chemistry kicks in) to ensure this goes like this:

- Prefer younger cashiers to older cashiers: I empirically know that middle-aged and older people can be unbearably slow. Note that I don't mind queueing as long as I see some progress: unbearably slow is slower than that.

- Prefer women to men: they're not necessarily faster but I find it more pleasurable to spend my time queueing while observing a female cashier.

- Prefer attractive women to others. They're not necessarily faster but I find it much more pleasurable to watch them while standing in the queue. Moreover, given the (speed-wise) age range from the first bullet, the woman's age doesn't really matter. General looks and vibes matter most. Breasts do play a part.

Yeah, I'm a man.

I disagree: give me a cashier in their forties or fifties anytime. They are work fast and are more experienced than a young temp or weekend worker. For me the people who are waiting makes a big difference. Couples are good, because when one is paying the other will be handeling the groceries.

People usually queue so that the queues of the same length in meters when I arrive --- so I go for the queue that has the least amount of stuff in it.

OP is missing one critical piece of data: in many stores, there is a much higher probability that a junior cashier is on the express line. The express line tends to have simpler transactions, so it is a more natural training ground. This progression would have cashiers "moving up" to the lines with greater volume and complexity. Ironically, express line cashiers end up being slower.

I wish they had 'airline' style dispatching: one line, and then you go to the first available cashier. Oh well.

I find it odd that the only place you get airline style dispatching is the self service lines. But, I think it's a space and time issue. Adding the time it takes to find the next open spot and move there is going to reduce throughput.

actually they don't do this, because this decreases the control a customer has, and customers like to feel like they control something, even if it is as silly as selecting the line where they wait.

A Whole Foods in NY has that. Everyone just gets into 3 lines and a note pops up telling you which cashier to go to. I think they have 3 lanes just to hold more people - the system would be identical with any N lanes.

I was at the one in Union Square (5 lanes express, 3-4 normal) and I've noticed that frequently the express lines will be totally full (10+) and on the other side of a small barrier the normal lines will have almost no one in them. Once I don't think I had any wait at all by not using the express checkout.

I sometimes wonder if people at the Whole Foods think they have to use the express if they have fewer than 10 items.

How about the Trader Joe's line? For those that don't know, there are two lines (express, non-express) that extend the entire perimeter of the store. I'm not joking, the line goes through aisles and blocks you from getting certain things.

The trick to this is to gather all the items not bordering the line, then get in line and shop while you advance in line.

Tesco, an enormous supermarket chain, had that in some stores. It was so efficient, and (what I'd never considered) took up much less space: you don't need to keep waiting room for 20 lines, just one long line.

Most medium-size supermarkets in the UK do that (Tesco Express, Sainsbury's, M&S Simply Food). I've never seen it in a large one though.

I find the biggest time sucks are: A cashier who can't take payments fast, and a customer who can't pay fast. Someone who doesn't know how to work their credit card adds a lot of time.

Based on just being observant, I've got a general intuitive sense of when the people in front of me might take a long time to pay. I look for people who seem unaware, in a zombie-like trance, shuffling their feet along the floor with their eyes blurred off into nothing. It's a pretty decent judge. For cashiers, just waiting in the line a moment usually gives a good idea, and I'll move lines if I'm in a hurry and the cashier appears new or particularly slow.

I find it frustrating that there are 3 major credit card companies but every store has a different procedure for accepting credit cards. I can never remember if it is 3 screens I need to tap yes on, or 5.

It looks like not many people have experienced the ethereal reaches of grocery store technology embodied by some Super Stop & Shops in New England. You scan your groceries with a handheld unit as you put them in the bags in your cart. All you do at (self) check out is pay.

Vast amount of time saved by not unloading the cart and reloading your bags.

I don't understand how theft isn't a problem since it is easy to even inadvertently forget to scan something as you put it in the cart, but it is a huge improvement in the shopping experience.

Well, most people will just be honest, especially in public, even if there's no real way for someone else to tell what they're doing.

Also, if eliminating conventional checkout lanes frees up floor space for more products to sell and lets them save money by hiring fewer cashiers, a higher rate of theft may still put them ahead overall. It can seem counterintuitive, but at some point preventing fraud is more expensive than just eating the loss.

The automated scanning system in Tescos UK weighs items as you scan them. You can only scan one item at a time, and must place the item in the "bagging area" before you can scan the next item. It only takes one person to oversee 8 or so scanning machines to provide the human theft disincentive.

The store where I shop here in the Netherlands works like that - no interactions with humans required for the whole process, which I appreciate. I believe there's some sort of sanity check heuristic at the checkout - I once did forget to scan something, and a friendly store employee walked over to me with a different scanner and scanned a couple of items until a light went green.

Usually when I choose to go through the express line it is because the line is around the same length or barely greater than the other lines and there is a clear advantage because the normal lines have people with groceries filling their carts to the brim.

Something confusing me was the pleasantries exchange and cash is faster than debit. People do say hello and ask if you found everything fine and whatnot but while they are saying that they have already scanned 3 or 4 of my items I haven't ever had the trouble of someone talking and waiting for response before scanning items.

In response to cash is faster than debit there are always people fumbling with wallets to get cash out and such while with a debit card you just slide (most of the time before the checkout is even done) and enter pin/ sign receipt and you are on your way, you don't even need to wait for someone to count out change back to you.

In response to In response to cash is faster than debit, it never happens that way here in New England. I watch as the register total increments. Every $20 I pull another $20 out of my wallet so when I'm done I just hand the wad of cash to the cashier.

Compare that to someone with a debit card who always has to wait for the cashier to do something (I dunno what it is) then tell the customer to swipe their card and enter their PIN, except the swipe often needs to be repeated, and then there's the wait for approval.

Not only is the cash-pay mean time lower than the debit-pay method, by my observation, the debit-pay time has a huge variance depending on equipment reliability, account status, the occasional desire for extra cash and other technical issues I've encountered only once:

Many years ago I tried a debit transaction but was denied, so I paid cash with my "emergency" $100 bill. Later that month the store charge showed up on my statement, but of course by then I had no evidence I had already paid the bill in cash. Of course this would never happen to anybody else, and it sure as hell isn't happening to me again.

I'm horrible at choosing lines, and it aggravates me to no end.

As in most endeavours, the vastly more important factor in determining efficiency is the person doing the job. i.e. the cashier or the programmer, not the type of line, or the language.

I've often felt they drop the new employees in the express lane as the reason it seems to go slower.

I've always thought that checkout speeds are negatively correlated with the amount of register localization. By de-localizing the registers, one could map a redistribution that makes the distance from each shopping section equidistant. This would effectively eliminate the need for "express" lines.

This can't be a novel suggestion, so why has it not been implemented? It shocks, to think that major companies would sacrifice efficiency so as to not disturb a consumer's sense of familiarity.

Sorry, I stopped reading at "It's my DaVinci code."

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