TAKAPUNA PAK'NSAVE INTRODUCES QUEUE FOR THE QUEUE, BLOKE GIVES UP AND GOES TO NEW WORLD

The Takapuna Pak'nSave has rolled out what staff are calling a "holding queue". It's a queue you stand in before you're allowed to join the actual checkout queue. That one then feeds the self-checkouts.

The new system, marked out with retractable belts and a bloke in hi-vis holding a clipboard, kicked off Tuesday morning. By 11am it had backed up to the hot bread. Shoppers with full trolleys were told to wait behind a line of tape. A second staffer then waved them through to a second line of tape.

Sparky Reuben Falesau, 34, abandoned a trolley near the holding pen. It contained mince, two-minute noodles and a slab of Export Gold. "Mate, I've wired three-phase boards faster than this," he said. "Bloke with the clipboard told me I was 'next next'. What the fuck is next next. I've got a job in Browns Bay."

Marlene Tuilagi of Sunnynook said she'd been in the pre-queue eleven minutes before being promoted. Then she waited another nine in the real queue. "The self-checkout told me there was an unexpected item in the bagging area. It was my handbag. Where else is it meant to go, the roof?"

A Pak'nSave spokesperson said the holding queue was a "flow management trial" to "improve customer throughput." Asked whether adding a second queue made the first queue shorter, the spokesperson said the trial would be "reviewed in due course." The bloke with the clipboard said he was on $24 an hour and didn't make the rules.

Falesau's trolley was still parked by the bread at 2pm. The mince was going off. The Export was warming up nicely.