Have you ever been in a dilemma which queue to ‘board on’ so you can reach the cashier fastest? We’ve all been there, calculating ‘quantum physics’ just so we end up in the slowest possible moving queue in the world.
But did you know there is a SIMPLE trick you can use to master the ‘Supermarket Race’?
Instead of measuring the number of items someone has in their basket, measure the number of people in the queue.
Researchers discovered that even the fullest cart takes about 40 seconds for the cashier to ‘beep’. However, the process of paying, getting back change and moving away, takes average of 41 seconds per person.
This means that the element of how much products there are in the cart is irrelevant. The number of people should be calculated because that’s what takes most of the time for the queue to move.
So the next time you are at the supermarket, even though it might go against your gut feeling, look for the queue with the least number of individuals waiting in line, and not how many items each individual has in their carts.
This way you will almost always choose the fastest queue.
Information Source: NY Times;
