It's time to go grocery shopping. You know the drill: fill your cart; walk by all the checkout lines, looking for the shortest one; perhaps pay attention to how fast the cachier looks; get in line; and then it always happens! The person in front of you has a fifteen minute conversation about how the weekly mailer said bubble gum was on sale for 10 cents off this week. Why do we still get stuck in slow lines in the supermarket? This problem was solved a long time ago.

If you ever go inside your bank, you've seen the solution in action, though you may never have thought how to apply it to other types of establishments. If you live near Silicon Valley and have the least interest in electronics, you know what I'm talking about. Go to Fry's electronics, and when its time to check out, you join the back of a very long line. That's the bad news, but the good news more than makes up for it. At the front of that very long line is a very long row of cashiers. Whenever one finishes up with a customer, they hold up their number, and the next customer heads to the next open register. In case you don't see them hold up the number, they even have a spotter standing at the head of the line pointing out which cashier is ready for you. The line moves fast, and if one customer takes a lot of time, so what--everybody else keeps moving.

With old stores that would have to rearrange their registers to use such a system, it's understandble, even if annoying, that they're still stuck in the past. But it's absurd that new stores are being built with the same old take-your-best-guess arrangement. If you know someone who works at a grocery store, point this out to them. With any luck, they'll eventually catch on.