Checking Out

Retailers invest ungodly amounts of money on advertising, in order to lure people into their stores. They expend additional time, energy and money encouraging customers to bring a boatload of goods to the register. But that seems to be as far along the process as they’ve given any thought. Getting customers to the register seems to be the final goal.

I find that dumbfounding. Shouldn’t the goal be to have the customer leave the store with those goods, but more importantly, with a smile on his/her face, rather than a look of exasperation and disgust? This most critical part of the process, from the time a person gets in line until they walk out the door, seems to get no attention by most retailers. It’s so simple and so obvious. If I walk out the door unhappy, I may choose never to walk in those doors again. Making one sale at the expense of innumerable others in the future is retail suicide. Why do so few retailers get this?

The other day I was in the checkout line at Bed, Bath & Beyond. (It could just as easily have been Home Depot, Office Depot, Target, Best Buy, Sport Mart or any other store with a row of checkout lines.) I picked the shortest line, knowing full well that, despite appearances, it would wind up being the slowest. I also knew that there’s no defeating this particular Murphy’s Law. There was one couple in front of me. That’s all. Just one. And they were already being rung up when I got in line behind them. Things were going smoothly as the cashier cashiered. Then the woman member of this couple indicated that she had forgotten to get something or other and she zipped off into the store’s innards. This left the cashier idle and the husband standing there apparently unconcerned that his wife had just put a halt to commerce at this particular line. By now a small line was forming behind me as I watched in mild disbelief. Disbelief because it is totally beyond my comprehension that any presumably fully functioning human could be so thoughtless and solipsistic. But only mild disbelief because I experience people manifesting this degree of rude, self-centered behavior daily, almost every time I go into a store.

Fool that I am, I decided to see this one through, to stay in line, rather than switch to another line, which of course would then grind to its own halt due solely to my presence.

Three or four minutes pass. Still the woman doesn’t return. Five of six people who were in line behind me have moved to other lines and have completed their purchases. It’s taking the full force of my will to stand my ground in this line. I’ve exchanged looks of, at first, exasperation, and then incredulity, with the cashier who is apparently helpless to do anything about this Candid Camera-esque scenario.

Now here’s the part I really love. At this point the husband, apparently inspired by his wife’s thoughtlessness, decides to exit the line himself to help his wife find the elusive item.

So here we are with no one in line. I’m standing in line behind no one. How can this be? At this too little, too late point, the cashier suggests I might want to move to another line. I politely decline. Several more minutes pass. Finally the couple reappears, nonchalantly placing the indispensable item (a soap dispenser) on the counter. The cashier rings it up, they complete the transaction -- 18 minutes later -- and off they go. The cashier, offering no apology, rings me up.

Wow. What a mind blower. And if it isn’t a moron like this woman holding things up, it’s a price check, or a shift change, or my cashier watching the cashier next door grappling with some problem. Or simply too few lines open. One way or another, stores seem to find a way to regularly, as a matter of routine, make customers wait far too long in line for far too little reason. Can’t they hear the roar of all that money they spent on advertising to get ‘em in to the store going down the toilet?

For once, advertising cannot be faulted for this wrong which shoppers are continually subjected to. Alas, neither can advertising deliver us from this retail failing. The people who run these operations would have to do that. Here, if I may, are just a few ways they could remedy this problem.

Hire and train some additional cashiers.
Program the cash register to put a transaction on hold, in the case of a price check or if that lady who was in front of me should show up again. That way the cashier could ring up the next person or two (or, in the above case, twelve or fifteen), during the wait.

Take a lesson from, of all places, banks and post offices. Configure your checkout procedure such that there’s a master line which feeds people to each checkout line as cashiers become available.

Incredibly, during this past holiday season, Best Buy did just that. It worked beautifully. So well, in fact, that they immediately abandoned it, reverting to the old system on December 26th.