Who is checking, and who is in front of you? White women of upper middle class appearance tend to write checks. Men and nonwhites do not. Men usually carry their credit cards and cash in more accessible places than women. Certain sorts of checkers tend to be slow (political correctness prevents specification of sex, race, and size.) Store managers tend to be slow. In some stores the “10 or less” line is operated by the least experienced checker.

Being the first customer in an empty checkout lane does not ensure the fastest possible checkout time. It all depends on the customer. The reason is that the cashier’s scanning speed is limited by the number of items on the belt. If the customer unloads the cart one item at a time and the cashier begins scanning immediately, then the customer’s unloading speed equals the maximum cashier scanning speed. The fastest customers, as far as ringing up is concerned, are the ones who have already placed their groceries on the belt.

I stared at these ‘cough drops’ and immediately had visions of graphic organizers dancing around.

The question (what line do you choose?) is a great writing warm-up for persuasive writing and argument support. Because more often than not, persuasive writing assignments tend to take root in heavy literature once a semester gets rolling.

What people above call ‘variables’, I’d call ‘reasons followed by examples’. Pure paragraph development heaven.

On the other hand, teachers going off on tangents annoys some students. I think there’s definitely a right way and a wrong way to do it. But anyway, even if it’s beyond the scope of the particular class, it can’t hurt to mention it, and guide students in the right direction if they’re interested to learn more.

As for a different visual: what about a 3/4 shot of the queues at eyelevel (or perhaps 8 ft.) Something that would simulate how they might arrive at the lines in a real store.

Great, let’s see it.

I’d say either 1 or 2 seconds to scan an item. With a lot of stuff it would be less than a second. Books were especially quick since the ISBN was in the same place for any book.

There is a lot of variability in the payment method time. Since we’re only going to care about the time that is additional to “scanning time”, I’ll talk about that: the time spent after a cashier presses [Total].

Check: customer writes amount (or entire check, which seemed to be the case a lot) and takes out ID for cashier to look at. 10-40 seconds.
Check must be read and endorsed by computer/printer: +15 seconds.

Cash: customer hands bills modestly over the amount: 20 seconds for cashier to make change.
OR customer tries to count exact change: 30-45 seconds
OR customer needs $80+ worth of change (rare) 1-5 minutes for a manager to arrive with key.

Credit: sometimes this can overlap almost entirely with the scanning. If the customer is ready: 5-10 seconds to accept charge and sign.
OR if the customer hands card to cashier, 10-20 seconds.

Other line-hazards:
1) pricechecks (dealbreaker)
2) people returning items (dealbreaker)

Bagging:
Not a big deal at either Longs or Barnes and Noble. At grocery stores, sometimes there are people who are there specifically to bag. If that’s the case, they are pretty much done before the transaction is finished.

As for a different visual: what about a 3/4 shot of the queues at eyelevel (or perhaps 8 ft.) Something that would simulate how they might arrive at the lines in a real store.

Any student who works in a store with a system like this will either know or will be able to get the information needed (time per item/method of payment). Of course, we could get that information, too, but it might carry more weight for the class coming from a student.