I am a quintessential rule-follower. I’m not one to get in the line with more items than the limit. But sometimes when the store is slow and the “15 or less” register has no customers, the store employee who directs traffic will tell me to go to that register even though I have a cart that is half full. I usually protest because I know as soon as I get in that line, a customer with four items (see post above) will step in behind me and shoot daggers at me with their eyes. Sometimes I do it, but I’m very uncomfortable the whole time.
I’ve never seen anyone refused as such. I did see a time when somebody got in the express lane with too many items and the cashier told them it was the express lane. The customer went to another lane without any argument.
Yeah, I once had a busy-body snark at the full cart in the low number of items lane and had to tell the person that there hadn’t been anyone there at the time and she had received an invitation to proceed despite being over the limit.
One of the first things you learn in retail is that someone is always going to be unhappy.
Once in an express line when someone with a full cart got some nasty looks and a couple of muttered comments they suddenly seemed to realize they had too many items and decided to move to a regular checkout. I think this happened more than once but the one I remember it was a pleasant looking woman and maybe she really didn’t realize she was in the wrong line. The looks and comments probably did help her come to that realization though.
I’m proud to report that in my local store, Giant Eagle, the sign does say “or fewer.” Once I learned to spot the difference between where “less” or “fewer” is the correct term, I totally noticed the sign.
Being a Pittsburg company, their automated “welcome to self checkout” message is in a Pittsburgh accent, though, and that makes me laugh.
As a Pittsburgher I can tell you there’s no such thing as a Pittsburgh Accent. I got to warsh my car now.
I have seen cashiers inform a customer of the limit before they unloaded their cart, when it is clearly being exceeded. But you don’t actually see this often in Canada. Most cashiers will not get excited if one only exceeds the limit by a couple items, or if there is no line of people waiting. I tend to stick by what is posted, but note some stores, possibly tired of arguments, seem to have taken down specific numbers.
You need to listen to Christine Lavin’s Shopping Cart of Love
Lyrics:
What I’ve seen is the disappearance of the 15 items or less line in a number of places. The Mariano’s and the Jewel stores I frequent both don’t have it anymore. The slow growth and usage of self checkout might have something to do with that because most of the people I see using self checkout have only a few items.
I had the opposite of this happen to me once. I was in line with a moderately full cart (maybe 20-25 items) and was in the lane next to the express lane. There was no one in it, so the express-lane cashier told me to come over and she’d check me out. So of course right after I moved over and started unloading two or three people with baskets of only a few items each suddenly appeared. One of them started complaining about me being in the wrong line. before I could start to apologize the cashier told them that it wasn’t my fault, that she had told me to get in the lane.
It gives me a tiny gleam of hope for humanity when I spot such infrequent signs of civilization. 
I feel the need to clarify-
In my story, we were all waiting in line. It was not the case that the rule-breaking woman waqs invited into an empty express lane by a cashier.
This is an example of what is known as, “Murphy’s Law”. LOL
I wonder if anyone has ever done the 12-items-or-fewer line with 12 50-pound bags of dog food; ideally different varieties so each has to be scanned.
Do grocery stores still have huge bags of dog food like that? If not, what is the heaviest and/or largest item in most grocery stores?
My usual grocery store has 25 pound bags of plain rice.
I think it’s helpful to think for a moment about the purpose of these rules. The goal is to give better customer service, to make customers happy by getting them out the door quicker, particularly those customers who are buying a modest number of things.
Is that purpose served by having the “10 items or less” register sit idle because there are zero customers with 10 items or less waiting to checkout?
I done 5 or 6 bags of potting soil. Charcoal. Bird seed, or cat litter.
At different times. Awhile ago.
Back in the early days of self-service express checkout, I actually got pulled into the express checkout with a full cart by a store employee. The regular checkout lines were backed up, and there was nobody doing self-checkout (six registers open) so she dragged me over to self-checkout and started helping me scan and bag.
The only problem was, within a couple of minutes all of the self-check registers were busy and a line started to form. And here I was in the middle of checking out a full cart. I felt pretty stoopid but at least it wasn’t something I did voluntarily.
I didn’t know that I’ve seen someone refused service in the x items or fewer lane, but I’ve heard a clerk tell someone, in an “information giving” voice, that the lanes for a full cart are over there.
My supermarket just got rid of the Express lanes, and replaced them 6 self-checkout registers that say “15 items or fewer”. Immediately before this, they were down to one express lane and had 4 self checkout registers. And back in the day they had 2 or 3 express lanes.
I saw a guy turned away from a regular (not express) lane at a Kroger store right in front of me. He enraged the guy behind me who threatened to hurt him if he didn’t take his full-to-the-brim cart to the regular lane. The cashier called the managers and security who surrounded the whole cashier’s stall and coerced the guy to push his cart to a regular line. It was probably against policy for the management to do that, from the other posts. But it was close to a riot at 5:15 on a Friday night. I was humping the magazine rack to keep away from the violator and his critic behind me.