61–70 of 172 posts
It becomes even more obvious if you think of it like scheduling processes on a CPU. Why needlessly set CPU affinity and only run on a single CPU when you could just take the next available timeslice on any CPU?
Except there are reasons for CPU affinity, such as the cache.
It's obvious that single queues for each cashier isn't very efficient, but the tradeoff is that lines are visibly shorter, and progress to the goal is clear.
Having a single line for all cashiers (ala Fry's Electronics or an airline ticket agent) is more efficient, but the long line, logistics of finding the next available cashier, and uncertainty of completion make for a frustrating experience as well.
I posit that having N banks of 4-6 cashiers is a good balance between both. You get the efficiency gains of not being blocked by a bottleneck, and you also get visibly shorter lines and the benefits of estimating when you are next (ok, looks like cashier 1 and 2 are almost done, I should be out of here in a few minutes).
Someone here mentioned this kind of setup with self-checkout at grocery stores, and I think it works well, as long as the number of self-checkout stands in the "bunch" is not too large. There's a local grocery store where there's 8 of them, and it's a little too chaotic (IMO, anyway).
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Ah, but you see, anyone who writes checks (hellooooo, slowdown!) and anyone who is scared of technology (I think the two groups overlap a lot) will go wait in another line. So at least at my store, the self-checkout lanes have a lot of young people buying one or two items and paying with credit cards, which works out to a pretty good speed. Occasionally you get somebody who sits and stares at each screen of instructi…
I guess it depends on the quality of the self-checkout system. At my Stop & Shop, there are four or six self-checkout lanes staffed by a single person (Go go union job elimination!) If you get through a purchase without running into "wait for attendant", sure it's fast. But if you do have to wait, because their fundamental distrust of the customers makes the system get many false positives for stealing, now you are i…
The short term problem is that there's only one attendant and many customers run into problems with the process - I was stuck behind an elderly couple that couldn't figure out the card payment terminal. All I needed was for the attendant to press one button on her screen so I could keep scanning. If they're going to switch to these new systems they should at least use 2-3 attendants for a while until customers get used to them.
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Around here, the grocery self-checkout works the same as the normal checkouts, mainly because they just replaced the normal ones in place. (Also, self-checkouts suck. I bet their throughput is terrible compared to manned checkout lines. That teenage checkout girl is WAY better than I am at scanning stuff.)
As much better as the teenage checkout girl is than I am at scanning, it's nothing compared to how much better she is at pricing produce.
When there is one cashier and a dozen customers waiting, that tells me the store is too cheap or too mismanaged to have other cashiers scheduled.
The best thing a store can do for customer relations is to open additional registers when too many customers are waiting, it implies the customer's time is important.
I also enjoy discovering it was the store manager themselves running the extra register - it means they stay in touch with how things are done (and how hard the cashiers have to work).
Most of the grocery stores in my area have installed self-checkout systems that are especially great if you just have a handful of items that all have UPCs (no produce or bagged bulk), don't have any items requiring an age check and possess at least the intelligence of a fifth grader. I mention this not just because it's relevant to the idea of waiting in line at a store, but because in every store where I've seen th…
At first they were awesome because nobody used them, so you could zip right through and avoid the lines. But now, after they've been here for a few years, a lot more people feel comfortable using them but many of those people use them poorly and far too many people will use them even when they have an entire cart full of groceries. That's an entire cart full of stuff they have to scan without accidentally voiding the whole order (which I've seen happen multiple times), a lot of trial and error on trying to figure out how to scan their produce, etc, etc.
It has reached the point where I rarely bother with self checkout anymore unless there is absolutely no line for it because while the system works great when nobody else is using it, it doesn't scale that well because most people are terribly slow checkers relative to dedicated workers doing that job.
A blend is probably a better choice. It's obvious that single queues for each cashier isn't very efficient, but the tradeoff is that lines are visibly shorter, and progress to the goal is clear. Having a single line for all cashiers (ala Fry's Electronics or an airline ticket agent) is more efficient, but the long line, logistics of finding the next available cashier, and uncertainty of completion make for a frustrat…
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No, because the cashiers handling smaller transactions finish quicker and can process more people. If you're stuck behind a guy which takes 2 minutes to check out, people in other lanes will be in their cars before you even begin checking out.
Here's a concrete example to make harabago's point clearer (since I think it is a little tricky). Imagine 9 people in line. Each person takes 1m to checkout except the first guy takes 10m. With three lines it looks like this (these are their wait times before being serviced): 0 0 0 (first person in each line has no wait time) 10 1 1 11 2 2 If you sum up the total wait times you get: 27m Now do this with a single file…
In the early days, the food was all built asynchronously from the orders. Cashiers would walk back and fill the order themselves from the bin full of burgers and fries in pretty quick fashion and the customer would be on their way.
When the whole "made as you go" approach was started, McDs decided to keep the 1:1 cashier-customer model (unlike Burger King or Wendy's, who do it 1:N style).
So now you have customers ordering and standing around next to their cashier waiting for the food to be made, which the cashier has no control over. The order of filled requests is also somewhat random. If the kitchen is having trouble, people start piling up by the counter.
I've noticed that some stores are experimenting with a numbering system that is encouraging you to step back and watch a monitor for your order when it is ready.