I intended to make a quick run to the grocery store last night, being out of such important items such as food and toilet paper. I got through the store fairly quickly, but got stuck where I always do: at the checkout. As always, I got in line just to discover I had chosen the wrong one. Big mistake.
The cashier was done for the day, so she checked out. When the next cashier went to check in the system needed to be rebooted. That took a bit of time. It seems like every time I pick the checkout line at a store, it takes a really long time for some reason. Even if the line is short.
This summer, I went to Walmart and the guy I was behind had just purchased the last of that model grill in the store. It was the floor model. There was no price on it. All of the seasonal department was apparently on break, because none of them came to the register when paged by the cashier. A regular manager finally came. After I switched lines.
Another time in Walmart, I happened to be behind two out-of-state men who were cashing their checks and buying beer. The cashier couldn’t seem to enter their address correctly, and had to get someone else to help her. She was entering the wrong postal abbreviation for Mississippi.
And so, I have come up with a list of suggestions to ease your retail experience:
-Never get in line behind someone at the grocery store who is using food stamps. Even if it is the express checkout and she only has 10 items. Every item needs to go through separately, the food stamp needs to be run and signed by the user and the cashier. It takes a long time.
-Don’t go through the self checkout in a grocery store if you have anything that doesn’t have a bar code on it: especially fresh produce or bakery items. The employees watching those lines often disappear.
-It doesn’t matter how short a line looks. It can still end up being the longest.
-Changing lines doesn’t always help.
The moral of this editorial though is don’t let me pick the checkout line at a store if you go shopping with me. Ever.
Waiting in line so much, I’ve learned that while technology has advanced tremendously in recent years, humans haven’t been able to keep up.
