An orderly queue of one

[ewx]

I often go home from work via Sainsbury's to get some shopping. I've noticed the following things about the queues.

There are a dozen or so traditional tills, with one operator and a conveyor belt. Not all are always in use, but they generally have about equal queue lengths, usually between 2 and 5 depending how busy the place is.

There is also, at one end, a cluster of about half a dozen smaller tills, with just a shelf for your basket, and a single queue for the whole cluster. It's rare that all the tills are manned but I don't think I've ever seen them with less than three in use, usually more.

The cluster queue is usually the same length, to within one or two, of the main queues, despite the fact that it drains three to six times as fast. (No prizes for guessing which queue I choose to join.)

(A trolley would would be a bit awkward for the clustered tills but (nearly?) all the shoppers in this supermarket use baskets.)

Comments

[j4.livejournal.com]

That's bizarre -- I've found quite the opposite! That is, the cluster queue often stretches for miles (though it does move pretty quickly), while the single queues towards the far end of the shop are more or less empty. Perhaps it's a time-of-day thing? I'm usually in there at lunchtimes, when the laudably-correctly-labelled "8 items or fewer" checkout is open (the one where you can buy coffee as well), and that might make a difference to the distribution of the other queues.

The 8-items checkout is better with carrier-bags, too -- that is, usually they actually ask "Do you want a bag?"* whereas the cluster queue tills automatically stuff things in a bag without asking (I'm getting much better at a quick-fire-but-still-polite "I-don't-need-a-bag-thanks").

* on the till at Oxfam we are instructed to ask customers "Do you need a bag?" rather than "Do you want a bag?" -- subtle but it does seem to make a difference!

I don't think I've ever seen anybody use a trolley in Sidney Sainsburys.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Could be time-dependent, yes.

I'm also in the habit of pre-emptively refusing bags, though my habit of waving a huge rucksack around may help there too.

[aldabra]

I've used a trolley in it, but that was when K was pre-walking, I think; I couldn't balance her on my shoulders and pick up a basket off the floor at the same time, and my companions thought I was about to drop her.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

I used to use one, but now if I have to go in there, it's so headachey that I just dash in an out. Well, I say I used to use one - they didn't always have them available.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I do see trolleys there from time to time - they have a smaller trolley size than is usually found in supermarkets. I've not noticed where the trolleys are kept yet.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

The cluster is for '10 items or fewer'? (Or whatever the Sainsbury equivalent is.)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I've not seen a sign saying so.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Then I wonder at the point of it.

Oh, hang on, it's 'one basket or less', on the grounds that you can't get a trolley in there.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Well, it packs tills and queue in much more densely than with the traditional arrangement, indeed at the expense of not being able to get a trolley in, though trolleys are at least extremely rare in that particular shop.

[lnr]

It certainly used to, but I've not noticed if it does any more.

I tend to only use it when I have a small number of items though, on the principle that seems to be what it's meant for. Usually I can find a normal til with little or no queue though, like Jan.

[gerald_duck]

This would be the Sidney Street Sainsburys, not the Coldhams Lane one I infrequent, yeah?

For the most part I shop in Tesco: there's one near where I live, one half-way up the A14 between home and work, one just down Newmarket Road from my office and one near Milton Country Park and Bait's Bite lock, both of which are nice places for lunch on occasion. Location, location, location, and all that.

Tesco now has self-service tills in most stores. While there are efficient and friendly checkout staff in supermarkets, they're a minority; going self-service is both more pleasant and quicker. A lot of people agree, so the queues for self-service tills are now longer than for conventional ones.

This probably doesn't do much for the morale of checkout operators who thought they were doing a skilled job…

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Yup, Sidney St.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Hmm, they've just about finished redoing the Tesco 50 metres behind me, and they've not put in self-service tills.

Mind you, the checkout operators here are pretty friendly, and usually fairly efficient. I can just about pack as fast as they can scan, but only just.

[gerald_duck]

Yes; that's often the case for me, too. However, I find they have a cunning trick to give themselves the advantage: they send all the light fragile items down first. Since you don't want to pack them at the bottom of the bag, they pile up while you wait for heavier items. When the heavy items arrive they send two or three down really quickly so you can't pack them. Then you have to spend time fending them off the fragile items at the end of the conveyor rather than packing anything, and they can relax the rate a little while still leaving you flustered and lagging.

And what happens to your fragile purchases if they start checking stuff out before you've finished stacking the conveyor belt doesn't bear thinking about. But at that stage you lose with the automatic tills as well, unless you have an accomplice.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Ah, but my cunning trick is to put the light/fragile stuff at the back, so they get to it last.

(I find it pretty rare that the operators pick stuff off the conveyer in a markedly different order to that in which it is presented to them.)

On a per item basis, I find the conveyors faster, and that ability to lay the stuff out in the order I want to pack it into the bags is quite useful.

They've nearly finished the Royston rebuild. The ATMs were open at last yesterday evening, in their final position. The café had opened. There was only one corner fenced off, and the windows behind the tills were uncovered. There's a little scaffolding visible from here (and a blue power cable going up one wall and over the roof!), but the last major bit to do would appear to be resurfacing the car park.

[gerald_duck]

I notice your layout strategy is markedly different from vyvyan's, below. And there's quite a lot of pressure to stack the belt quite densely if there are people behind wanting to start unloading their trolley; that can mess with sensible ordering.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Well, they do need to take the stuff off their end of the belt before the light sensor will let the belt move forward. I can see a certain argument for a slightly diagonal layout - the first item to be packed will be the item at the fron of the belt, on the operator's side. But on the whole, it makes little difference when the total is much longer than it is wide.

Interestingly, our bunch don't tend to start the checkout process until you've finished loading the belt, so if there's noone in front of you, they have a little rest.

(And I don't have so much that I can fill the belt before emptying the trolley.)

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

I notice your layout strategy is markedly different from [info]vyvyan's, below.

Is it? I thought we were both describing the same thing! I try to pack items on the conveyer belt densely as well, for the reason you mention.

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

I combat this possibility by arranging my heavy items on the part of the conveyer belt nearest the assistant and the light fragile ones far away from them. I group items that need processing in a particular way (e.g. ones with discount labels) together on the belt as well, so that the assistant can deal with them all at once.

It doesn't work so well if there's no one in the queue in front of you - there isn't time to arrange things suitably on the belt before the assistant pounces on them - and of course it doesn't work if there's little or no space to arrange your stuff (as in the mini-tills for baskets-only/6 items or less etc.). This is possibly an argument for favouring longer queues at tills with long conveyer belts, over shorter queues at the mini-tills.

[(Anonymous)]

> This probably doesn't do much for the morale of checkout operators who thought they were doing a skilled job…

At my local Tesco (Newmarket) they cunningly made the self-service tills randomly refuse to recognise things, or insist you had/hadn't put something in the weighing area when you hadn't/had, to boost the morale of the operators and keep the self-service queues down. (As well as having to wait for an operator to press the "this customer is over 18" button when buying alcohol, or for opening DVD cases.)
Actually they do seem to have improved recently, but I'll use the single basket lanes in preference to the self service ones unless the self-service queue is significantly shorter. Mostly our supermarket shopping is online though, with fresh veg coming from a box scheme and/or farm shop.

[armb.livejournal.com]

That was me, sorry.

[gerald_duck]

That's Newmarket, not Newmarket Road, right? The self-service tills in the Newmarket Road branch are splendid and reliable.

I buy DVDs online, and am teetotal, so I confess I'd not spotted either of the other problems you mention.

[aardvark179.livejournal.com]

I beg to differ. The Newmarket Rd. ones will frequently fail to notice you've put the scanned item in the bag/on the conveyor and won't do anything more untill you do.

They also require authorisation for things like magazines, which I think is actually a positive thing because it makes me more likely to buy them somewhere else. :-)

[(Anonymous)]

> That's Newmarket, not Newmarket Road, right?

Yes. (Newmarket Road, Cambridge is sometimes more convenient for odd things as I cycle past on my way to the P&R car park, but Newmarket is more convenient if I'm going from home at the weekend, or if I'm getting more stuff than will fit easily in bicycle panniers (with "buying a tankload of petrol" being both a special case of much easier to put into the car and something not sold at the Newmarket Road store).)

[armb.livejournal.com]

That was me too - I could have sworn I'd ticked the "remember me" box...

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

I used to b a checkout operator. It's news to me that anyone thinks it's a skilled job.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Hmm. When I lived next door I used to often count people in queues when it was getting busy, and it seemed like the shelf queue was about #tills times longer.

I can speculate about possible causes:

* There's only so much room in the line, and people don't like to squeeze in.
* People just go to the nearest queue
* People hate toting baskets round corners and just prefer a conveyer.
* They think the conveyer is much faster
* They have a large (basketfull) amount of things, and there's no room to pack by the shelf
* They spontaneously leave the shelf tills for people with one or two items, because they'd rather wait an extra minute now to be really quick when they want to be (I don't think this is likely, but people can *sometimes* navigate a prisoner's dilemma nicely :))
* They just look at queue lengths and don't work out the details. (What I assume you assume -- and is pretty likely)
* It's hard to see how many people are serving the shelf tills, and when they're partially filled they're times slower.

You could always ask. Go to the conveyer half a dozen times and query the person next to you. Standing in a queue is a rare time when people might be bored enough to welcome stupid surveys! (And in central evening, many may be students, and not mind the weirdness so much.)