a simple idea to make choosing the fastest checkout line easy

By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Jun 11, 2007

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Today I stopped at Meijer on my way home from work. As usual, there were only 10 or 12 checkout lines open, each with three or more people waiting in line. My strategy for choosing which line to wait in is pretty basic. I look for the line that has the fewest total items, not people, in front of me. Three carts with 20 products in each equals 60 items. I also try to guess whether the cashier is a rookie or seasoned professional. That's all the criteria I can think of to use.

Tonight, I chose a line with 60 to 80 items, and what I thought was a seasoned professional. I waited in line for 16 minutes. I chose the wrong line. But in that 16 minutes, I realized that it would be incredibly simple for Meijer to provide shoppers with a reliable method to guess which line will move fastest.

As far as I know, Meijer doesn't pay cashiers a bonus for each customer they checkout. I've also never seen a reserved parking space for the speediest cashier. I'm pretty sure cashier's don't get to leave work early once they've met an hourly customer quota either. I doubt any of those incentives would consistently motivate the cashiers anyway. So what incentive is there for cashiers to improve their speed? None, as far as I can tell.

When you watch major league baseball, every time a player comes to the plate, fans will always see the player's batting average displayed on the screen or on the monitors in the stadium. In football, you'll see the quarterback's completion percentage, or a running back's average yards per carry. Based on these stats, fans can quickly figure out whether the player is likely to get on base, complete a pass or rush for a first down.

How would checking out at the grocery store change if each line had an LED display above the cashier that showed his IPM, or Items Per Minute checkout rate? Let's also put a 60" screen at the front of the store that shows a ranking of the cashiers based on highest IPM, along with their checkout line number. I'm talking real-time statistics, updated after every customer ends his transaction.

I'll bet that checkout times would decrease significantly, and quickly. Cashiers would compete for bragging rights, and maybe a nice bonus in their paycheck too. Customers would now have real criteria by which to choose a checkout line. In fact, customers would probably seek out their favorite all-star cashiers, like Joe "Rocket Scanner" Clark and Bob "Lightning Bagger" Jones. Heck, cashier trading cards, complete with photos on the front and season stats on the back, might even be fun to collect. :)

The systems are already in place to collect the data. The need for an incentive exists. The benefits to the customers, cashiers and stores are plentiful. The only question is who is going to be the first to do it.