How to pick the fastest line at the supermarket
Get behind a shopper who has a full cart
That may seem counterintuitive, but data tell a different story, said Dan Meyer, a former high school math teacher who is the chief academic officer at Desmos, where he explores the future of math, technology and learning.
“Every person requires a fixed amount of time to say hello, pay, say goodbye and clear out of the lane,” he said in an email. His research found all of that takes an average of 41 seconds per person and items to be rung up take about three seconds each.
That means getting in line with numerous people who have fewer things can be a poor choice.
Think of it this way: One person with 100 items to be rung up will take an average of almost six minutes to process. If you get in a line with four people who each have 20 items, it will take an average of nearly seven minutes.
Those minutes add up. Richard Larson, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who is considered the foremost expert on queues, estimated that Americans spend 37 billion hours a year waiting in lines.
Then tell me if they work. The tips don’t factor in the way the tape receipts always need to be replaced when it’s your turn, or errors of the credit card reader, or at the supermarket I go to, the cashier having to get approval from the manager.
September 10th, 2016 at 02:35
“Get behind a shopper who has a full cart.”
–depends on how homogeneous items in cart are; if it’s like all bottled water/ice/ice cream/frozen imported chicken/instant noodles/hotdogs/etc., then GO! If it looks like a mobile sari-sari store or a lost caravan, RUN!
“Choose a single line that leads to several cashiers”
–depends on the number of cashiers. On Henry Sy’s supermarket, the snaking small green basket line, with 20+ people in line and only 3 cashiers at the end, NEVER! I always fall in line with the big carts.
“Look for female cashiers”
–Not applicable here, I guess.
But thinking about this now, in my experience moms with a toddler in tow are the most generous people in a supermarket queue, when it comes to giving way/giving up their place in the line. They would gladly and sometimes automatically let me go first; without me even asking, when they see my barely half filled basket of men’s toiletries, Kor/Jap instant noodles and Jell-O.
I’m actually feeling guilty, while thinking about it now, coz I realize it’s highly probable it’s one of the things I subconsciously do; looking for moms with a kid in tow, when choosing a line in a supermarket. Sorry.
So thank you to all the generous moms and anyone out there who are decent enough to know how to properly behave like a human being in a line.
September 10th, 2016 at 10:25
ros: Recently I was in a queue with a lady who noted my two dozen cans of cat food and asked me how many cats I have. I said two, ages 16 and 4. The 16-year-old probably eats too much, but at her age she can eat whatever she wants. The lady agreed, she was like that with her 90-year-old mom.