Sam’s Club has hand-held scanners also. I can check my stuff out, pay, and be on my way very quickly, without bothering to remove anything from my cart.
I just downloaded the Sam’sClub app that allows you to scan items as you put them into your cart. It’s even quicker.
The only supermarket that I have seen that will open ALL the checkstands (and wheel in portable ones too!) is Market Basket. Note that most of their stores start with two dozen lanes, and there are stores with more. :eek:
That makes sense. The “accessories” stand (salts, straws, napkins etc) is between the lobby and the alternate concessions.(and right across from the bathroom). I think traffic would be a mess if everything was open on a busy day.
When I ran the theater on the mall’s third floor, we VERY quickly learned that we had to time the movies exactly–if the crowd bunched up and overloaded the escalator, it would stop suddenly.
Think human dominoes.
Your mention of portable checkouts reminded me of one day in Target awhile back when it was busy - probably back-to-school - and I was standing in line, and some dude comes up to me with a hand scanner and small rolling cart of bags, and asks me if I’m ready to check out, scanned and bagged everything in my cart and printed me a receipt right there. And I couldn’t help but think, instead of this portable setup, why not just open another one of the dozen plus registers you have sitting idle? You’re still paying someone to do checkout either way.
This is only true if people are choosing not to shop there because of the length of the lines.
I also have a Harkins near me that’s roughly the same setup, and “rear” concession stand has absolutely never been staffed despite the fact they seemingly do rotate the signs and candy in the displays to keep them current.
I have another fancy movie theater chain near me that is basically F shaped, with the middle being the entrance and the very bottom of the F is where all the giant screen IMAX-lite screens are that show 3D films. At the bottom of the F is a second concession stand which I actually have seen people there on occasion but it’s so inconsistent I never actually use it since I’ll just buy stuff up front.
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Yeah, this seems like a silly place to draw a line in the sand. Self-checkout is often faster than waiting in line for a clerk.
I assume the general answer to the OP is that the store was designed with a set of economics in mind, and those economics changed.
A similar thing I’ve noticed is that many fast-food restaurants have someone out walking the line of cars in line for the drive-thru rather than using the built-in-place speakers. Often they’re taking orders 2-3 times as far out from the window as the speaker was built.
My assumption here is that the restaurants have improved throughput dramatically since the speakers were built. Used to be that they could handle X orders in the time it took to make an order, and now they can handle 2X or 3X.
Another possibility that we haven’t mentioned is that the lanes might be designed to handle the day with the most annual demand. Having 20 lanes open might only happen on Black Friday, but if having those 20 lanes go mostly unused for the rest of the year means that you can make an extra 30% or something on the one day it matters, might be worth it.
That;s precisely the issue my employer has. In other areas they have no problem hiring people but they do in ours. I suspect it’s because of the competition as well as being a HCOL area with fewer applicants all around. Every retailer is after the same people, so it’s really an applicant’s market right now.
I would imagine all the lanes are open for Christmas shopping. Ivylad and I ran into an issue at a Walmart. He’s in a wheelchair and we had and entire cart full of groceries. Only the self checkout lanes were open and the manager on duty said that’s the way it is. So we left the cart full of groceries, including ice cream, in the middle of the aisle and walked out. (This was pre-CV.) Ivylad called the next day to complain and the manager was quite apologetic and said they couldn’t keep cashiers. I would think this could be some sort of ADA violation but we don’t normally shop inside Walmart anyway.
I have found that if I go to the self-checkout area and grab an attendant, he/she will perform the checkout while I watch. I can always confess ignorance and encourage the attendant to assist. If the attendant starts to walk away, thinking I can do it myself now, I point out that I have liquor, and you can’t self-checkout liquor anyway, so she better stick around. Moral: always put some beer or wine in your cart.
There have been times when the standard checkout lanes were backed up, and an attendant tried to divert me to the self-checkout area. I agreed, but only if she did the work for me. Never had one refuse yet.
So the eventual outcome is the self-checkout section doesn’t save any employee work at all, just makes the shoppers annoyed.
Shopping with Musicat sounds like it would be incredibly unpleasant.
My local target has most, if not all of the lanes open during high volume holoday shopping times and I noticed last week they had them all open when people were stockpiling. I suspect that the cost of each stand is inconsequential enough in the overall cost of building a store, they found it’s easier/cheaper to have one (or a small number of) checkout layout(s) for every store, even if many of the stores will never fully utilize them because they never get that busy.