Happy New Year’s Everyone!
I thought I would cover a topic that is generally more prevalent during the holiday season but something we all run into at least once or twice a week. That topic is waiting line etiquette. I have always argued that the only fair approach to merchant lines is a single line with fan out. Specifically this means that there is a single line that all customers begin in. At the end of this line you disperse out to an open register. This insures a true FIFO (first in first out) that insure a fair treatment of all customers and no one is victimized by a particularly slow checkout employee, unacceptable price checks because the merchant failed the customer by not effectively labeling or programming the price of an item or god forbid the two parties decide it is chat time. Unfortunately, only a few merchants appreciate their customers enough to impose this order at the registers (note, failure to plan enough space to do this in the register area is not an acceptable excuse). I will give Best Buy, Taco Bell and Burger King props for consistently using this checkout model. Often times I will attempt to initiate this myself by standing back a couple feet from the registers in hopes that at least two other people understand that this is really the fastest approach in the long run (there is a chance you might pick the fastest checkout, but I’ll bet you will fail more than you will succeed). Note, I say two people because I have found through trial and error that this is the key number – as long as those two other people hold the line, others feel obligated to conform – and thus everyone wins.
My recent observation not only did not have the optimal line approach, there was clearly what I call a line violation – translated – someone decided they were more important than the other individuals waiting in line before them.
