PAK'NSAVE SPREYDON TRIALS QUEUE FOR THE QUEUE, BLAMES "FLOW MANAGEMENT"
Shoppers now line up to be told where to line up. Barry Hoskins, who remembers when you just walked in, files from Spreydon.
Pak'nSave Spreydon has introduced a queue to join the queue at its self-checkout, with a high-vis staffer at the head of the first line directing shoppers into a second line ten metres further on.
The new system, marked out with retractable belt barriers and one A4 sign reading QUEUE STARTS HERE in Comic Sans, was operational by Tuesday lunchtime. By 12.40pm the queue for the queue stretched past the hot chickens and was nudging the pet food.
Shopper Lorraine Beattie, 71, of Spreydon, said she'd come in for a loaf of Vogel's and a block of tasty. "I joined what I thought was the queue. Turns out that was the wrong queue. A young fella told me the real queue was over by the bin liners. I've been standing here since the Beehive was a building site, near enough."
A second shopper, Dwayne Forsyth, was less measured. "It's a fucking piss-take. There's twelve self-checkouts. Six are open. Two are screaming about unexpected items. One's eating people's vouchers. And now there's a bloke with a clipboard telling me to wait behind a rope."
A Pak'nSave spokesperson said the trial was about "customer flow optimisation" and had been "very successful in Auckland stores". Asked whether a queue for a queue was, in essence, just a longer queue, the spokesperson said the second queue was "a holding queue, not a queue queue", and declined to clarify further.
In 1974 you could get a trundler, a leg of hogget, and a chat with Ron at the till in under four minutes. The clipboard fella has now been issued a second clipboard.
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Reader Letters
couchgremlin
Lol.
Garry (Halswell)
Back in the day, we'd just walk straight into Four Square and come out before the buses went on strike. Modern life is a mess.
modern_max
Garry, things have changed since the '70s. Let us have our queues and clipboards!
wayne1987
Mate, it’s a bloody nightmare in there now. They want us to queue twice when half the checkouts aren’t even running?
MumOf3
Honestly, this queue for a queue is just going to bugger up my Saturday shopping trip. Why can't they just put more staff on?
conspiracy_kev
This is all part of the government’s secret plan to control crowds. It's like the chemtrails but with shopping carts.
logical_linda
Mate that's not how chemtrails work... and not everything is a conspiracy. Sometimes they just make dumb decisions.
kiwi2london
You lot whinge about queues, but try living in London where the queue is just life. At least here you've got someone making it orderly-ish.