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July 17, 2007
TITLE: how many items?
file under: thoughts about things
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the photo above was taken at my local Safeway. while certainly well-intentioned, i think their desire to streamline the checkout process has gone slightly awry.
when carrying a full hand-held basket, how easy is it to count the number of items you have? can you even see all of them? what if you laid a bag of chips on top of 15 smaller items? if i have a single bag full of 10 oranges, is that 1 item or 10? if i don't put the oranges into a bag, is it 1 item or 10? the seemingly simple Express Checkout process is full of fuzzy logic, in my mind. i doubt that anyone counts items when they go through these stands, and by the same token, i doubt that checkers count things either.
the whole point of line segmentation in markets is to separate the full carts from the people with a few items. why bother putting numbers to things? why not just segment based on the size of your cart (handheld or four-wheeling)? doesn't that make more sense? sure, there's the edge case of the guy who buys 50 packs of gum and puts it into a hand basket, but there aren't many freaks like that....oh wait. sorry. i live in san francisco.
Posted by docrpm on 07.17.07 at 8:54 PM
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Comments
weird. as. fuck.
Posted by: michele at July 17, 2007 10:48 PM
Seems like this is a great example of what happens when you try to legislate common sense...
Posted by: James Hsieh at July 21, 2007 6:03 PM
