So I'm waiting in line to check out my groceries after work today and remember the article stating Kroger got the wait time for checkouts to an average of 30 seconds. When do they start calculating this time? If you start from the time I stepped into the checkout line to the time I got my stuff bagged and I left was a little 6 minutes. If you go from the time the checker started ringing up my items to the time I left was a little over a minute. Anyway you put it, it took well over 30 seconds.
remember it's an average and depends on order size and ring tender, whether they have a bagger, maintaining queueing or not.
also, sometimes stuff happens that's out of their control like customers missing debit cards, forgetting their id, check writers, items not found, etc.
Actually I think the 30 second check out time is pretty accurate if there is a good supervisor up front. If the FE is an hour behind on breaks, has 4 call-ins, and a storm is starting, then obviously you're going to be waiting a few minutes to be checked out. And this applies to any store, not just Kroger. Ever been to Wal-mart when it's thundering? The lines aren't pretty.
There are more small orders than large orders, so the mean checkout time gets skewed towards lower values. A proper measure of center for this case would be the median checkout time, which I'd probably place around one minute.
I'm sure they're including u-scan in those statistics, too, and it's really easy to checkout of u-scan with only a few items in about 30 seconds if whoever is running it is paying attention.
Actually the wait time they are referring to is the time between when a customer walks up to a checkout lane and the time the cashier begins the transaction by scanning an item. It is not total checkout time.
