Thu, 02/23/2017 - 10:00am

Bill Packard

Well, football season is over and what a win for the Patriots! Now that the excitement from that is over, we're still in the throes of winter, but thankfully there's NASCAR. The Daytona 500 kicks off the season and I'm looking forward to it. I'm a big NASCAR fan (judge me if you must) and have always felt we can learn a lot from that sport. I even have a video on my YouTube channel that talks about how small businesses can learn some lessons from NASCAR.

I think there is a great opportunity for grocery stores to follow the example of NASCAR and make things better for their customers. A little background. I do the usual grocery shopping. From time to time Kathy and Tera go unannounced to some exotic location and come back with big packages of toilet paper, paper towels, family size chicken, ribs and other meats. I have no idea where they go or what's involved. All I know is that it's an all-day project for them that goes deep into the night and I have a car full to unload when they return way after dark. That's not the grocery shopping I'm talking about. My kind of shopping is not as much shopping as it is buying. It takes a very short time to go in, pick up what I want and check out. No overflowing cart, just what we need, and that's where NASCAR comes in.

I do most of my shopping at Hannaford on Maverick Street in Rockand. Sometimes it's The Common Market in Union. That store is super, but I have to drive by the house to get there, and that's really troubling for me, so more often than not, it's Hannaford. My NASCAR idea wouldn't work at Gary's anyway because of the setup, but I'm really hoping Hannaford runs with this and implements it to coincide with the beginning of the season.

When I'm buying, I rarely exceed the 14 items or less purchase so I go to those checkouts. A couple of times I've mentioned that the 30 pack of beer put me over the limit, just trying to be funny, but the checkout folks don't find that funny. They just tell me that I'm fine. It's the same reaction when they ask me if I found everything OK and I ask them if they hid stuff. Not everyone sticks to the 14 items or less rule. I think I have a solution for that.

In NASCAR, certain violations require the offender to go to the end of the longest line on the restart. That's what I think should happen at the grocery store. Here's how it would work. Every time they scan an item, there's a beep. When I'm in line at the 14 items or less line, I count the beeps of the people in front of me. It's my way of judging what kind of a person they are. A 15 or 16 beep person gets the benefit of the doubt. Yes, they could be stretching the rules, but it's not blatant and maybe they lost count of things that were buried in the cart. The 24 to 30 people, I don't think much of them. Yes. It's possible that they use common core math, but I think it's more likely that they only think about themselves and don't care one single bit for the people behind them in the line. Under my plan, here's what would happen. When the beeper beeps for the 15th time, the light starts flashing red at the checkout and a siren goes off along with a loud announcement something like, "Item violation in aisle 3. Item violation in aisle 3." At that point available baggers would grab the offender's groceries and whisk them and the offender out of the line. The checkout supervisor would show up and take control and determine the longest checkout line. There would be no appeal process. The offender and their groceries would be placed in that line.

Here's the beauty of this plan. Only the offender is inconvenienced. Everyone else benefits. The way it works now, the offender is not inconvenienced, but everyone else is. Every time the 14 items or less aisle reaches that limit, someone is checking out or starting over. It's really pretty simple. In fact, I'm surprised nobody has thought of this before.

Yes. You're right. It's genius. I do what I can. Drivers, shoppers, start your engines!

Bill Packard lives in Union and is the founder of BPackard.com. He is a speaker, author, small business coach and consultant.