I stowed away to the front of Whole Foods a couple times, parking myself at a bar table and taking notes.
See for yourself
Here, I recorded instances where the check-out counter is a real ergonomic issue- particularly at the end of the process when a customer/cashier is bagging the groceries.
This is what I noted, when I, myself, went through the check-out line.
-Moving groceries is a time suck- it's what contributes to the wait.
-The checkout of purchases can be broken down into 6 steps.
1) Groceries are taken out of the cart & loaded onto the belt
2) Groceries travel down the belt to the scanner
3) Groceries are scanned/weighed/etc
4) Groceries rolled down a corral to the bagging area
5) Groceries are bagged.
6) Bags are put back into the cart.
This highlights areas of redundancy; places that add time & energy to a customer's wait & a cashier's job.
I can easily see technology pushing us forward past the steps of putting our groceries on the conveyor belt & it rolling down towards the bagging area, presenting a more efficient situation, like this:
Essentially, if the checkout process is simply the point at which the store bills you for your purchases and records inventory data, then it should require nothing more than that. A simple swish over a scanner, a tap of a credit card, and off you go!
