Apparently, as was reinforced to me today, rules don't really matter. They are just relics from the past when people used to consider other people worthy of respect and when people believed that society was a better place when everyone knew what to expect from each other. However, our society has evidently developed to the point where that is no longer helpful.
Let me admit right up front that this is a bit of a rant. I'm assuming that if you know me, you already picked up the sarcasm. (The sarcasm is a healthy thing at this point because it means I'm past the completely frustrated phase I was in earlier.)
The scene started out as expected at Walmart: too many people and not enough open checkout lanes. Surprisingly, I got in lane 29--which is convenient labeled "Speedy Checkout: 20 items or less"--and was lucky enough to be third in line.
Side note: Do you remember when Walmart used to advertise there fast checkout policy which said that they would open a new lane if there were more than 3 people in any line? Did I dream this? I don't think I've been to Walmart in the past 5 years when there was a line with 3 or less people. I'm guessing that the average line length is at least 5 customers overall.
Back to the story: The first customer in line finished up almost immediately, so I became number 2 in line. Yes! As the 50-something woman and her 20-something daughter began putting their items on the counter, I noticed that they seemed to have a lot of items for a 20-or-less line. I counted 27 items, but there were about 10 items before I began counting, so I'm guessing there were nearly 40 items.
This started me thinking that 20-or-less is a really high threshold for a speedy checkout line. The number 20 is high enough that it's not easy to eyeball the number of items in your cart and be reasonably close. I really couldn't blame someone for thinking they probably had 20 items when they really had 30. In that sense, I can chalk part of the problem up to honest estimation error. What bugs me is that the difference between my 2 items and 20 items is significantly different than the difference between 2 and 10 items. I would argue that for the checkout to be speedy, the threshold really needs to be lowered to 10.
I also noticed as I looked at other non-speedy lanes that the people in the speedy lanes appeared to actually have more items than the people in the non-speedy lanes. Is that because the people in the non-speedy lanes were honest enough to count their items and realize they should not go in the speedy lanes? If I can't visually realize the difference in item count, then the number is too high.
I would think that lowering the number would also increase customer satisfaction with the speedy lanes because they would have a chance to be speedy. However, since the store does not enforce the item limit at 20, there is no reason to believe they would be willing to enforce it at 10. And this is where my title comes from. People have reached a point that they do not believe that the rules apply to them. Having 40 items in a 20-item lane does not matter to people who think they are above the rules. Also, the store is not willing to enforce the rules, which creates a degrading spiral of lack of enforcement and lack of compliance which result in the item limit being completely useless.
Due to another issue (which I won't cover here), I ended up switching lanes, where I got behind a couple who had more than 45 items (a partial count again) in a 20-item lane. Their cart was actually full--not overflowing, but full.
How are we supposed to teach children to follow the rules if everyone around us is not following the rules?
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