I had a bunch of stuff (Over the limit) in W*W that took all of 4 entries to check, (6 of these, 7 of those, etc.) nothing needed bagging and I had my CC ready and was waiting on the cashier at several points. It took me less time than the lady ahead of me with 2 little things, using cash and messing in her pocketbook hunting exact change. Who is gonna complain about a little ole lady?
The biggest hold up in stores is the cashier, then the (buying for a group needing to separate the stuff as it is checked and pay 4 times.)
Then it is items not marked…
One store we frequent, we find our favorite checker and use his lane no matter what because he is FAST, that is better than all the rules and express lanes (unmanned and bad cashiers) even when things are slow. We know his schedule and shop accordingly.
It is not about the rules, it is about the people checking and my own common sense and preparedness when shopping.
In the southern US (and apparently in portions of the midwest) I’ve also heard them called “buggies.” That term bothers me far more than it really should. Some customers at my store also call them baskets, which is confusing since we also provide handheld grocery baskets and cosmetics baskets.
To further explain why a cashier may individually scan items instead of just punching in “6” or some multiple…
– seemingly identical items may have different SKUs/UPCs, which are replenished differently, or which are tracked separately. Bonus sizes, alternate packaging, or even identical items that are meant to be stocked in multiple locations through a store. (Chap-Stik available at pharmacy and checkouts? Chances are, the UPCs are different despite the product being the same.)
–customers who buy things in bulk often accidentally grab a few of the wrong item. The guy who buys 12 Totino’s pizzas at once may think he has 12 pepperoni varieties, but if he was careless he may have accidentally picked up a sausage or cheese. This happens a lot with pet food cans. Folks will just pick up a tray of cans and put it in their cart, assuming it’s all one flavor, even though there’s a high likelihood that someone’s placed other flavors into the tray while straighening up.
–some companies track employees on scans vs. hand-keys/quantity-keys to enforce company policies on scanning. So, even if the option is available, the cashier would like to keep their job.
It’s a bit disingenuous to compare precision in mathematics to prescriptivism in linguistics. So as not to hijack this thread, I’ve started a new one about grammar here.
I was in Queenstown, New Zealand a couple of months ago and a sign at the store referred to them as “trundlers”.
I worked at a grocery store for longer than I’m proud of, and I would complain about that frequently, too. Eventually the store was renovated, and the sign was changed to “Fewer.” It had nothing to do with my having said anything, I’m sure, but it still made me happy.
Also, about counting 12 cans of cat food as one item, that was always fine with me when I was cashiering; especially in the case of such small things like that, where they all stack on top of each other. Regardless, though, I was an amazingly fast cashier – not to sound like an arrogant jerk, but it was truly an amazing spectacle to see me push items through a scanner – so I could take an order of 50 things and get them done as fast (or faster) than the cashiers in the “regular” lanes.