ATTENTION WAL-MART MANAGEMENT

You folks do good work. But please (puh-LEEEZ) consider the following when revising corporate policies and procedures in the future.

The following items have a matter/anti-matter style relationship with signs reading "Speedy Checkout". They cannot and should not exist in direct proximity of one another.

- The Wal-Mart "smoke shop" (that one lane that has ALL of the tobacco products)
- Non-speedy employees
- The acceptance of personal checks

These things can exist independently within your stores, but no combination of the above should be allowed to occur while there is a sign immediately present that reads "Speedy Checkout" (hereby "SCL").

Points:
When an employee has to obtain various packs or cartons of tobacco products while operating the SCL, there is a significant possibility of non-speediness occuring. You then run the risk of invalidating your sign and, in this litigious society, being held liable by, well, your customers anyway, and that should matter for something.

The very nature of the SCL dictates that employees operating it be speedy. This is not an age discrimination thing either. If you have a little old lady operating the SCL and she's lightning fast, that's cool. But not just any employee should even be permitted to operate the SCL. Candidate operators should be SCL certified. You should even incentivize the program by offering incrimental bonuses to SCL operators that are consistently (and increasingly) speedy (but still accurate and efficient of course). These people (quality SCL operators) are the Top Guns of your workforce, and should be respected and treated accordingly.

The actual processing of personal checks is not at issue. It is the preparation of the check by the customer that is the issue. As you cannot take over and control the customers (though we realize you are working on that), it is best to avoid this potential disaster all together. Permitting it to occur simply facilitates huffing and puffing by all SCL customers that are already not somewhere else fast enough. Credit cards are okay (there's no preparation by the customer after all), but only if the SCL operator is trained to be ready to press the credit button when prompted. At no time should there be "dead air" (moments of nothingness occurring after the credit card data has been entered by the customer but the SCL operator has not yet pressed the credit key), as it is a direct threat to speediness by all accounts. Operators must be spot on with the process. Re-visit second point if not clear.

If you do not perceive these points as valid, you should at least considered changing your signs to read "Restricted Checkout", implying only that customers must have less items, with no implication of haste. Those of us that take the word "speedy" to heart would be less disappointed in that scenario.


Bottom line:
At no time should a 3-customer deep SCL process at a rate slower than a 10-15 customer deep non-SCL. This metric is simply not tolerable performance by the #1 company in the world. Rampant propagation of non-speedy Speedy Checkout Lanes should be viewed as a fundamental threat to your continued corporate prosperity.


Bonus issue:
NON-TECHNO-SAVVY PEOPLE SHOULD BE COMPLETELY DISALLOWED (or at least strongly discouraged) FROM OPERATING THE SELF-CHECKOUT EQUIPMENT.

(This has no relation to today's issue, but is an issue I've long want to spout off about. Seemed like a good time.)


The back-story:
Shelby had a field trip for school today to a local park. Her mother took off work to participate. I got a call just before lunch time letting me know that Shelby had an accident of the bladder variety. I determined that it would be quicker to drive to Wal-Mart and purchase an outfit and underwear than to drive all the way home and back. Overall that plan was a success, but it wasn't as easy to execute as I would have liked. And whether any time was actually saved or not is borderline questionable.

With the gate closest to me at work closed for construction, and the next closest gate not open until 1130, I had to traverse a sizeable portion of the base at 25mph to get to an open gate. Then there was the typical near-lunch-time traffic to slow everything down. It was close to 20 minute post-call before I was even at the Wal-Mart. Obtaining the merchandise was quite quick, but then I got to the check out area, and picked the seemingly logical (and shortest) line, the Speedy Checkout Lane. That was unexpectedly unwise. I was in that line for close to ten minutes. I even got a phone call from the ex in the middle of all of it wondering where I was. I snapped of a "I'm standing in line at the Wal-Mart, what would you like me to do?" a bit too loud and I think the lady in front of me took that to heart when executing her transaction.

Of course the best part of the whole deal was, as I was already quite flustered with the drudgery of the experience, the feeling of near-bursting frustration that overcame me when the SCL operator said "I hope this thing works, it didn't yesterday", in reference to the check processing thingy, as the customer handed her a check.

So the speedy checkout was... not very speedy as it turns out. I truly believe that, had I chosen a different line (or had the SCL actually been speedy), I would have been at the park before the ex called.