[bsder]

> As an american, grocery checkout queueing always angered me.

It should, because practically everywhere in the US does it wrong. There should be a single entry queue that distributes to the multiple handlers. Instead, you wind up with multiple queues so that people get hung up behind someone causing slow handling.

The one that infuriates me are bank queues. Look, folks, both queuing theory and experience show that you CANNOT have a single handler without your queue time going to infinity. So, how many active tellers do I always see on the unusual times I have to go into the bank? Exactly one. Always. And a queue that's backed up 6 deep.

[toast0]

> There should be a single entry queue that distributes to the multiple handlers.

Sure, that's more fair. But it also means everyone has to walk over to the queue entry. And often requires dedicated floorspace. If there's not good queuing discipline, it leads to larger gaps between customers at the registers and poor throughput. If there's a queue minder (which there probably should be in order to distribute people into subqueues), that person can steer customers to benefit their favorite register people: this was common at Fry's; register operators got a commission, so and some queue mindets would collude steer expensive carts to preferred registers.

Multiple independent queues works fairly well and avoids extensive coordination. Even if people don't like it.

[anigbrowl]

Instead, you wind up with multiple queues so that people get hung up behind someone causing slow handling.

Have you tried not caring about how fast the other queue is moving? IF you are in a hurry then most stores have 'quick registers' for people who are buying less than 10 or some similarly low number of items. And obviously if you get behind someone with a full cart you'll be waiting a bit longer, but you can only guess about the last person in the queue. But if I'm not in a hurry and have too many groceries to go through the express lane, I don't see the point in staring at other lines and being upset if one is moving faster than yours. Over time this is one of those things that just averages out.

[acheron]

By the efficient market hypothesis, if a spot in another queue was quicker someone would have already taken it.

[phainopepla2]

> It should, because practically everywhere in the US does it wrong

Where do they do it differently? I've been in grocery stores across Western Europe, Asia and Latin America, and the only place I recall seeing the single entry queue was at a Trader Joe's in NYC

[tasty_freeze]

The Barnes & Noble Bookstore (at least the two or three I have been to in the past 10 years) has a single queue. Fry's Electronics did it that way. The self-pay corral at HEB (a huge Texas grocery chain) with about 14 check-out stations does it that way. The Academy Sporting Goods store near me does it that way. The Austin Bergstrom Airport security gates are that way.

I agree that many places have a queue for each registers, but the other way isn't entirely rare.

[deaux]

Large grocery stores actually seem to do this the least, but many types of stores default to this in much of the world. Clothing stores, book stores, stationary stores.

Many larger convenience stores do and those are close to being small grocery stores.