One of my goals in designing a site like WatchNBuy is to eliminate the regular frustration I have when I’m out places and have to wait in line.
If the name of the game is to choose the line that will move the fastest, then I need to find a new game to play.
It was a day of making the wrong line choice like no other. It started at Starbucks at 7:30 am. I was faced with a choice, the walk-in or the drive-thru. There were about 10 cars in the drive through, so I figured I’ll park and go in. That was my first mistake of the day. When I got inside there were only two people ahead of me. The first lady must have been experiencing her first time in the coffee shop, she wasn’t quite sure what to get. So between the sweets and the lattes and all the various sizes she took about 6 minutes. The second guy was picking up breakfast for the office, 5 drinks and enough sweets to feed the band, another 8-minutes. By the time I got up there I got to experience the rare morning coffee moment, they needed to brew more. “Sorry sir, it’ll be about five minutes”. When I finally left with my coffee the drive through was empty.
Now it was off to the office for a few hours, then a drive over to the bank. The bank had 8 lines; only four were open, two were just for us commercial bank users. Two cars on the left, one on the right, this one was easy. No it wasn’t. The guy in front of me was doing some type of payroll deposit, and I sat there for 20 minutes. Meanwhile fresh cars whizzed in and out in the other three lines. Now you say, why don’t you switch lines? Great question until a car behind you boxes you in.
Later that day I stopped by the market on the way home. My mission: to grab a gallon of milk. Easy choice here, the express line 10 items or less. With only one person in front of me, this will be fast. Except this guy had 20 items, a slow checker, and no box person helping. Meanwhile the regular lines around me were humming right along. After they were finished with the guy who couldn’t count to ten, it was my turn, but wait, it was time for the dreaded checker switch. That’s when one checker gets off duty and the new person comes on. They have to rearrange the drawer and get settled in. If I had chosen the regular line I’d be home by now. I get up there and try to buy my one item; unfortunately since I just went to the bank all I had was a hundred dollar bill. The nice young lady who had just checked in for the day says, “I don’t have any twenties, I’ll have to give you fives and ones.” I said, “No thanks, could you please get some larger bills?” She had to go all the way to the back and get change, another five minutes, and she tried to make me feel bad about it in the process.
My day ended at the movie theater. If you think the post office can be slow, they take the people who failed the postal test, and any other test, and put them behind the food lines at the movie theater. My wife gets in one line, I get in the other. We’re both crawling along in our two dud lines while the other lines speed along. Finally we choose her line, and as the person in front of us gets Nachos, candy, a pickle, popcorn and three drinks, all the other lines are seeing fresh people. Ten minutes later, we got our popcorn (hold the grease) and went to find our seats.
It would be too simple to say the moral of this story was to “just shop on-line”, but that’s one of the reasons on-line shopping is becoming so popular. Staying home and using my computer would have kept me from feeling so out of line.
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George Siegal and Luis Ramirez are the creators of watchnbuy.com. You can contact George at
george@watchnbuy.com or Luis at
Luis@watchnbuy.com.