Thank you for your informative and easy to understand response, techelite. You provided both immediate and more long-term ideas that can be implemented without any need for drastic changes. I'm going to make notes of what you said and run it by our CSM. I again appreciate the time you took to outline some possible solutions.
We're not supposed to have more than two customers in line at a time and I was once told that the idea was to get each customer through in under thirty seconds. In actuality though, I believe the computer only registers a dip if a customer is kept waiting for more than two minutes, but I'm not one-hundred percent sure of that, though. Essentially, if customers spend too much time in line, the computer penalizes us because we're supposed to have the fastest check-out in town (according to the posters/signs in our store and in others in my area, too).
Edit: Thanks for the clarification, techelite.
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Well, coming in a bit late on this one, but yea. Try that with a customer who has a $100 + order. Because your bagger is always going to be the fastest in the state and your cashier is going to have the reflexes and eyesight of Superman. *sighs* This is one of the many reasons I really don't like Kroger. There's a lot of them, as I have come to find, but this "Hey, let's get a heat sensor and computer to tell us what we will need, it'll be really cool" is a load of crap.