PAK'NSAVE AWAPUNI TRIALS QUEUE FOR THE QUEUE, BLOKES WITH ONE PIE NOW WAITING 25 MINUTES

Pak'nSave Awapuni has rolled out a queue for the queue this week, a roped-off holding pen where customers wait to be told which checkout queue they're allowed to join. A bloke buying one mince and cheese pie clocked 25 minutes in the system on Tuesday before he got to the part where you actually pay.

The pen sits between the chillers and the pick-and-mix, marshalled by a high-vis kid with a clipboard. Anyone who's spent five minutes on a real site knows what a clipboard means: someone with an office has had an idea, and the rest of us are paying for it.

Sparkie Damo Whareaitu, in for smoko supplies before a job out at Linton, was not impressed. "I've got two blokes on the clock waiting on a sausage roll and a Mountain Dew. Now I'm queueing to queue. Tell me how that's a fucking saving."

The clipboard kid, who looked about nineteen and like he'd rather be anywhere else, said he was just doing what the duty manager told him. Fair enough. A duty manager, when asked, said the trial was about "managing peak flow" and would be reviewed "in due course" — which is corporate for never.

By 11am the queue for the queue had its own queue, forming back past the $4.99 bread and curling toward the carpark. Damo's pie was cold by the time he paid for it. The two blokes on the clock are, at time of filing, still on the clock.