Queue Up!

Today I really needed to go shopping for some ribbon for my newest bonnet, so as long as I was out, I decided to do other shopping. I went into Wally World to get a few things we needed which turned out to be more than the minimum needed for the fast check outs, so I found the shortest line.

Why is it, whichever line I choose, no matter how short, will always take the longest? Do I know how to pick them or what? There was just one person waiting in the line...well three I guess, if you count the 2 children with the customer. I looked over what she had to purchase and it really seemed like not much...10 packages of TP, 4 gallons of milk, 9 two liter bottles of Sprite, etc. It didn't even fill half of the conveyor belt. I figured it was my lucky day.

The two little kids first decided to go through all the candy in the check out aisle, begging their mother to buy some. Then they started playing with the stuff on the other side of the aisle. At that point, she pointed to the front of the store, where all the riding animals and candy machines are located and told them to go play.

Then the checker started checking out the order . It should have taken 2 minutes. As she pushed the first item over the price reader, the customer said, "that is the wrong price. At Fresh Market it is only 88¢!"
"Do you have the ad?" the checker asked.
Of course the woman didn't have the ad, which meant the checker had to pull out her pile of ads to check the price, which involved several minutes of searching for the item in the ad.
Then the checker dragged the next item over the reader. "No! That is the wrong price! At Macey's it is $1.19!"
"Do you have the ad?"
This went on through 5-6 different items. After standing there waiting for 10 minutes I thought the end was in sight. Finally they had found all the relevant ads. My foot was aching, I was in a hurry to get home to go VTing.....and then she pulled out her coupons!
That meant the checker had to make sure the coupons were actually for the items she had. (The woman had already tried to use some sale ads incorrectly) After a mere 15 minutes of waiting behind the one woman in line, it was finally my turn.

During that last 5 minutes of waiting, I toyed with a couple of ideas:
1. Throw all my stuff back in my cart and try to find a different checker
or
2. Just leave the stuff on the conveyor belt and walk away and shop again some other day.

While I am not against saving money, or using coupons, I do have some suggestions that I think would help. If you are using coupons, or price matching ads, have the relevant ads along so they can be quickly dealt with. Perhaps stores need to have a special checkout line for folks who are going to use more than 3-4 coupons, just as a courtesy to other folks.

On my way out of the store, I asked the greeter if there was someplace I could make such a suggestion. She pointed to the customer service area.....where I was free to join a long line....