The line at Costco

Dear Congressman,

Yesterday the wife and I went to the northern reaches of Cincinnati to the Costco store at Tri-County. Costco, as you probably already know, is a "big box" discounter that competes with Sam's Club and BJ's stores across the USA. As a practice, we try to go there when it is quiet, usually right after they open or near their closing time. But circumstances dictated that we had to go during weekend peak hours, when everyone and their grandmother were roaming the aisles, filling their carts with massive slabs of ribs, over-sized containers of breakfast cereal, and twenty pound containers of athletic socks.

But I digress...

The point of this exercise is what happened when we got to the checkout line. It was more Ellis Island than orderly checkout, with people meticulously studying the lines to figure out which would move the quickest, allowing them to escape back into the blazing heat that surrounded the building outside.

As usual, I gravitated to the self-checkout line, as the lines were generally shorter then in the employee assisted lines. There were four of them at this particular Costco location, with every line with at least four carts. I scanned intently, trying to locate the quickest exit from this checkout Armageddon. The line furthest to the right had two carts so full that memories of Y2K came flashing back to me, so that line was definitely out. The line next to it had more moderately filled carts, but the average ages of the consumers were well over 60, indicating a high probability of technology overload when they get to checkout, with the aforementioned consumer scanning the same "one-year supply" box of cheerios six times before realizing their error and standing in place helplessly while they look for employee assistance.

This left two lines for my consideration. The line to the right had more people in it, but the carts were lightly filled, whereas the line to the left had one full cart and two people carrying items with no cart. My decision was made for me by the line on the right, as the person scanning their wares stopped and yelled out "I need some help over here", quickly followed by a hands-on-the-hips pose that stated "Costco, your machinery sucks and this delay is not my fault!". Thus, by default, we ended up in the line to the left.

Bad choice.

The two people hand carrying their purchases proceeded to checkout at an acceptable pace. No one set any land speed records scanning and paying, but they did not dawdle around either. It was the full cart that ended up tricking me. It was a younger couple, with the gentleman in a wheelchair and the wife holding their 3-4 year old child while waiting in line. At this point the debacle began, as the female handed the child to the male and prepared to scan the contents over the conveniently placed scanner. However, in this particular case, the female wanted to make sure that the male was aware of everything she was scanning, thus she would pick up an item out of the cart, walk the 5 yards to where the male was holding the child in his wheelchair, look at the item and then take it back over to scan. Additionally, the female was not familiar with bar code technology, as she would spin the purchase until she could physically see the UPC, and then firmly place the item on top of the scanner and move it back and forth vigorously. Then, as the scanner announced the price of the item, she would stare at the screen and then the item to verify that was in fact what she was willing to pay for it.

I bench marked our line against all the others to my right. Needless to say people who were still pondering Sirloin or T-bone when Melody and I first got into line were now merrily headed toward their vehicles as we grew roots behind this couple. Of course we thought about getting in another line, but they kept filling up with the people who had gotten in line behind us and realized they picked the losing horse in the checkout race. When she finally completed her ritual, she then produced enough coupons to wallpaper a small two bedroom house, again pressing them firmly against the glass scanner. At this point I hear an audible groan behind me, and then the noise of squeaky cart wheels in search of greener pastures.

So about 20 minutes later than anticipated, I get to my car and on my way. I write this in the way of a warning, as this couple did not give off the normal tell-tale signs of checkout scanner avoidance. But if you get in line behind a normal looking young couple with a child and a wheelchair, get in any other line available, or ... better yet... just put the stuff back on the shelves and proceed to the nearest exit.