Unused checkouts

December 5, 2005 11:24 AM

If retail space is really lorded over by bean counters, why do big boxes build so many checkouts that sit unused? On the morning after Thanksgiving, the north Dallas Super Target I went in briefly only had 9 out of 24 registers open. Why do they build them this way? Has anyone ever seen 90%+ of them open?
posted by hodyoaten to shopping (23 comments total)

The Super Target and Meijer I frequent usually has 15 lanes open and on relaly busy days I have seen all 35 open. I would guess it is due to lack of employees.
posted by internal at 11:30 AM on December 5, 2005

that's one of the big questions of our time..
posted by suni at 11:31 AM on December 5, 2005

I have no answer, but want to add that this is one reason I hate Best Buy and refuse to shop there. There are twenty registers open and only a couple functioning, even if the lines are long. Oh yeah, and I hate their ad layouts too.

Curse you Best Buy.
posted by genefinder at 11:33 AM on December 5, 2005

Which North Dallas Super Target were you in?

On Saturdays, especially afternoons, the Coit/Campbell location and the North Garland locations are both busier than hell. They do a LOT of business in the weeks leading up to Christmas - I imagine more of those checkout stands will be open as we get closer to December 25th.

I've started doing all of my grocery shopping there, too, since it seems to be cheaper, and that added food volume tends to increase the need as well.
posted by TeamBilly at 11:36 AM on December 5, 2005

I also have no answer but what I need to know is why SELF-SERVICE lanes remain closed at Stop and Shop. No.Employee.needed.
posted by Makebusy7 at 11:37 AM on December 5, 2005

I worked retail for a long while, and basically it comes down to not having enough personnel. When there are only 12 total cashiers on staff total and over 20 registers, all the lanes will never be staffed.

Also, it has to do with shift changes as well, because it's quicker to put an incoming cashier on an empty lane rather than shut the outgoing cashier's line down and wait for that to get the new one started. I hope that makes some sort of sense.
posted by chiababe at 11:40 AM on December 5, 2005

First, you have to take into account how many minutes of line per costumer are you willing to have on average. Then, based on the average checkout time per cashier per costumer, you must add the checkout downtime (due to machine failure, employee absence, etc). Then you put the expected max number of persons buying at any one time in that particular store (or class of stores) and you now have a pretty good idea of the number of checkouts needed. Not rocket science if you are a large chain with tons of relevant information available. Naturally you will have many checkouts closed at any time, but you will always be prepared to meet any given performance criteria when the need arises.
posted by nkyad at 11:43 AM on December 5, 2005

Makebusy7 writes "I also have no answer but what I need to know is why SELF-SERVICE lanes remain closed at Stop and Shop. No.Employee.needed."

Any supermarket with self-service lanes will always have an employee to staff the self-service lanes because there will always be some problem with something (price checks, credit card problems, etc). In addition, the employee is supposed to be watching for people who are less than honest with their self-scanning habits.
posted by chiababe at 11:43 AM on December 5, 2005

No.Employee.needed.

Not strictly true: all the self-checkouts around here have a little stand for the cashier at the end that has to be manned by someone to help with bad barcodes, ID checks for booze, unusually produce with no number codes, etc.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 11:44 AM on December 5, 2005

There's a disconnect between executive decree (theory) and management reality (practice). The former intends all registers to be open. The latter would like that, but often finds it impossible -- ironically, due in part to other demands on cost and labor issued by the executives.
posted by cribcage at 11:48 AM on December 5, 2005

On saturday, which is pretty much the biggest shopping day in Poland, I usually see all the registers at Carrefour, Tesco or Auchan staffed.
posted by jedrek at 11:49 AM on December 5, 2005

It has to do with employees as well as what was mentioned about closing registers. When I worked a register in retail (well, still do, but it's the only register in a really tiny store), it was hard as hell to get my break time in because people assume that if you're at a register you are checking someone out - regardless if the "register open" light is on or not.
posted by itchie at 11:55 AM on December 5, 2005

itchie: You had to stay at your register on break? weak.

Also, I'm sure in theory they want to be a little future-proofed. They may only use all the registers at Christmas time, or they might expect the town to grow and their business to increase over the year.

You wouldn't want to be constantly tarring down and rebuilding cashier stations to meet demand over the months and years.
posted by delmoi at 12:07 PM on December 5, 2005

No.Employee.needed.
What everybody else said. How it works at my Stop-n-Shop: You might not notice the self-serve cashier because when it's slow they juggle that with other duties in the front. My store also closes the self-serve lanes in late night/early morning, presumably to combat "shrinkage." During those times they typically have one lane open, and that checker spends most of her time stocking shelves.
posted by Opposite George at 12:13 PM on December 5, 2005

TeamBilly -- it was the North Garland location... 8:30 am. Maybe there was a lull and the cashiers went on break... but it was still Black Friday, nonetheless.
posted by hodyoaten at 12:24 PM on December 5, 2005

The CostCo near me has all the lanes open on weekends. Even with ~20, they're still swamped, with 15-20 minute checkout waits.
posted by smackfu at 12:31 PM on December 5, 2005

I recall something Bill Maher said. Wal-Mart had just been named, like, the richest corporation in the world. Bill said, "Yeah, they're doing so well, they're thinking of opening another register."
posted by Clay201 at 12:33 PM on December 5, 2005

Extra registers/aisles are also often built into the store when it's first designed as it's easier to put them in then rather than renovate should the store get big enough to warrant it.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 1:22 PM on December 5, 2005

The first couple of weeks that the Fry's Electronics in Austin was open, they ran all of the registers.

Since then, they've only run the "front row" of registers and left the back ones empty. That might change around Christmastime, but I don't know because I avoid it like the plague. 8-)
posted by mrbill at 1:38 PM on December 5, 2005

I think the root of the answer boils down to this: a given store will produce an unknown volume of business. There is a direct link between the money the store makes and the number of cashiers that can be operating.

When I worked retail in a small store, we had 4 cash registers. Usually one or two were open. On most Saturdays it would oscillate between 2 and 3. During the holidays it would oscillate between 3 and 4. In each case, the number of cash registers open was directly linked to what we could afford to staff, with a trade-off against what kind of line our customers could tolerate.

A new big box store is not a trivial investment. The builders will not know in advance how much money the store will make. So, they build it with a number of cash registers that support some fabulously optimistic money-making projections. Unless those projections are actually reached, and that big box becomes a super money maker, many cash registers will go unused. If many cash registers are closed during the peak of the holiday rush, it means that the store is not operating at theoretical peak money making.

The one-time cost of building cashwraps beyond the amount likely needed is probably much smaller than the cost of remodelling an existing store to have an expanded register capacity.
posted by teece at 2:23 PM on December 5, 2005

These are all good answers. I can tell you from personal experience as well: theory states the front-end manager should be able to call staff from the sales floor as needed to put people through at busy times, so you need those registers ready to go. (In practice, the floor staff find themselves beholden to their own manager, who has enough work for them to do, so you can't get them up.) (An aside: you'd be surprised how fast a big rush will subside when you have enough people to ring them through quickly. And when it does subside, you're questioned for having too many cashiers idle.)
posted by evilcolonel at 6:59 PM on December 5, 2005

I have a different opinion on this. I believe that they know in advance about how many checkout lines they'd need to have open in order to have checkout times of a minute or less. However, if they had enough lines going so that you never had to wait, there would be little intervals of idleness from time to time on some of the registers.

I believe that they deliberately understaff the checkouts so that they will never have an idle employee standing around at the register. The cost of this is that you will always have to wait in line. Fortunately, your time does not cost them anything. By the time you get to checkout you're committed to buying.

It is same basic trick that is used with automated answering systems. They are always getting 100% utilization of staff time, because they stack up customers on hold and spend the (free) customers time instead of (paid) company time. This is hard on customers but looks great on paper. When you file reports on staffing and sales there is no box for amount of customer time wasted. The Post Office and K-Mart both have this down to a fine art.
posted by Ken McE at 7:30 PM on December 5, 2005

chiababe: "Any supermarket with self-service lanes will always have an employee to staff the self-service lanes because there will always be some problem with something (price checks, credit card problems, etc). In addition, the employee is supposed to be watching for people who are less than honest with their self-scanning habits."

My local Meijer likes to shut down half of the self-service lanes late in the day. This makes absolutely no sense at all. If you have 4 self-service lanes or two self-service lanes, it takes the same number of employees (one) to watch the damn things.

(Anyone besides me always go for the "Espanol" option at the self-service lanes? I swear the male Spanish voice is less patronizing and interrupts less often than the invariably female English voice. My wife hates it when I do it though because she can't understand what the register is saying...)
posted by caution live frogs at 6:28 AM on December 6, 2005