Apart from the unusual ceiling (it's funny how two of those office-style square lights were installed hanging from the Marina ceiling!), the front end here was very much normal for a local Safeway: A few regular registers (mostly not in use) and a few self checkouts (always busy). The new store has a lot more self checkouts, but the exact same number of regular ones. I'm not surprised that's the way things are going, since it seems Seattleites (myself included) prefer self checkout and avoiding social interactions! 🙂
My local Randall's, which still has this style of Lifestyle register lights, actually had 2.5 manned lanes open yesterday. I say 2.5 because they had two regular open lanes, but then one employee was bouncing around between bagging for the two lanes and relieving the traffic by unofficially having a third lane open. While having that many lanes open is not unusual at some Randall's, I don't think I've seen more than 2 open lanes at my local Randall's in many years! It is good to see the checkstands get used, especially since I prefer that to the self-checkouts!
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure these register lights are still standard in Lifestyle v3/Colorful Lifestyle stores, 20+ years after they were introduced in Lifestyle v1! The express/self checkout signs have been redesigned slightly in newer remodels (with a plainer font), but I'm not sure if they changed the register lights at all (except Woodgrain Lifestyle v3, which uses the Ultra-Premium register lights).
DeleteWow, that's pretty impressive! The staffing at my local Safeway has gotten a bit better over the past year or so, and they sometimes even have a second checkout and/or the customer service counter open (that never used to happen), but apart from grand openings, it's rare to see baggers at any local Safeway these days.