Take a damn ticket!

[Lace Neil Singer]

Jeez, it's not a hard concept, right? In order to get served at the deli counter in the supermarket, you take a ticket. When it's your turn, the light flashes up. So how come so many people find this system hard to grasp?

Was buying cheese today at the counter; when my turn came up, this woman tried to barge in front of me, screeching that it was her turn cuz she'd been waiting for ages. The server just shrugged at her and said that since she hadn't taken a ticket, she'd have to wait til she did. The SC said she'd complain; I said that if she did, the server could call on me as a witness. The SC glared around, venomously ripped a ticket off the machine and went to wait her turn.

Honestly; it's a system designed so that everyone gets served in turn. Fair and square. No point in dropping the dummy over it.

[PepperElf]

Honestly; it's a system designed so that everyone gets served in turn. Fair and square. No point in dropping the dummy over it.

I dunno. since the "dummy" in question seems to be the screeching woman, it sounds like she's already been dropped. On her head. more than once.

[ArcticChicken]

OTOH, the deli at my local supermarket has a ticket system, but doesn't use it if it's slow. Which once resulted in my walking up to the counter with one or two people ahead of me (a no ticket situation), then a whole bunch of people showing up and them switching to tickets. The people who showed up after me were nearer to the machine, so they got tickets first. I was pissed, so now I don't buy my deli meat at that supermarket. Though that also has something to do with getting a BJ's membership, and the deli meat at the BJ's being so much better than the meat at the market.

[AmbrosiaWriter]

I like how the place I go to does it. You can either take a number, or go to a kiosk and enter what you want, then leave and way for your order number to be called. It's great because I can just go and get the rest of my shopping without having to wait in line for my cold cuts.

[Shpepper]

Dummy = pacifier in some places

[Chromatix]

In Finland, the ticket system is used in quite a few places - notably at banks and post offices and at staffed railway ticket offices. It's also used at the customer service, warehouse pickup and service/returns desks at the friendly local computer supermegahypermarket (just opposite the ferry terminal, with a MiG-21 on the roof - and I'm not kidding). Since it is pretty common, most people get along just fine with it.

But not very long ago, I had to send a letter internationally, so off the the post office I went. The queue was incredible, and I was left waiting for a very long time - at least half an hour. And, towards the end of that, there appeared an SC who thought that, since he only had something simple to do, he didn't have to wait in the queue like everyone else. And given that he was speaking English, he obviously wasn't a local.

Well, the post office staff explained quite clearly that no, he did have to wait, and no I'm not just going to serve you just because you keep shouting at me, and could you please get out of the way so that we can keep the queue moving? Eventually I had to step in and point out - in my recognisably British accent - that everyone else was having to wait too. That seemed to do the trick.

[MoonCat]

I've seen store deli counters serve people without tickets if it's very slow, but I learned the hard way that it's better to take a ticket anyway, because the minute I show up at the deli counter and start looking at the goodies, that's everybody else's cue to rush the ticket machine, and I end up with 20 people ahead of me.