At the waiting point, there is a light-up number post, indicating which checkout is available for the next customer. The light is triggered by the checkout operator when she is nearing the end of her current transaction, and accompanied by an automatic voice prompting the waiting customer “Next please”. Often there is a helpful employee there, too, to help direct traffic. Since you enter the checkout lane before the person in front of you has left, this solves the problem of wasted time in loading an empty belt. Order dividers, gum, candy, magazines are still provided along the sides of the checkout line, since you will still be waiting a small amount of time. Albeit a much shorter time than in a regular grocery store.

I prefer to shop at the commissary at busy times and if I have a lot to buy, because this method is extremely efficient. Yes, the single line can get long, but the line is moving CONSTANTLY and at a pretty quick pace. Almost too fast to pick up those impulse items placed nearby.

The best part is, it takes the guesswork out of deciding which line is going to be fastest. There is NOTHING more frustrating than picking the wrong line at the grocery store, and then seeing the person in the line next to you exit the store before you even get your items on the belt. It’s much less stressful, and I would submit that it makes for less jockeying and line-rage when it comes time to check out, especially during holiday season or after work.

The problem is that alternative packaging solutions do not fit neatly into retail racks the way that jewel cases do. Not only are jewel cases more sturdy than cardboard packaging, they are also thicker. Those annoying white labels across the top that are so hard to remove? They’re actually there as a service — their presence allows retail customers to easily find what they’re looking for in a crowded CD rack.

So the jewel case isn’t dominant because it is cheap, but because it has a specific functionality that most people don’t think about.

In a perfect world you’d be able to board all the window seats first, then all the aisles, then all the windows. In the real world, it doesn’t work as well, mainly because not all flyers are travellling alone. The airlines incorporate keeping folks together in the “zone”, so couples and families board together. This makes the boarding “clumpy”, so to speak.
Also, if you try to really go for maximum efficiency and set up the zones to incorporate both position in the aisle and position in the aircraft – say, zone “1″ being windows in the back, zone “2″ being middles in the back and aisles in the center, etc., you wind up with a lot of zones and invariably people board in the wrong zone.

Finally, any “WilMA”-like proposal winds up with aisle-seat holders getting screwed on overhead-bin space.

Airlines have put a great deal of thought into this over the years. Alaska Airlines actually did experiments and determined that the best system was for everybody to board at once – the randomization of one big line spread people out more efficiently than any other system. Ironically enough, I’ve heard that Alaska has abandoned this system because the “one big line” forming at the gate becomes unmanagable.

I doubt the opportunity to ply you with gum and magazines explains it. After all, you could place those offers just as easily along the single line as among multiple (it could easily be re-stocked at night, the same way the aisles are, or by making the displays swing open to the rear as I’ve seen done). Likewise the conveyor divider bars: you could just as easily put such adverts everywhere along the single line (such as at the “start line”). More likely those things evolved in response to the way things were done rather than Jordyne’s implication that supermarkets prefer to set things up so they can advertise Marlboro to us on the divider. I think Mike Sullivan’s explanation that the bank queue would be frighteningly huge if everyone had carriages (or carts) is the correct one. Jordyne’s observation that a market switching to this would have the reputation of always having a line is also valid, which is probably how express lanes developed in the first place.

Heavy duty theodolites must be precisely leveled and stable to operate correctly. The 3 vs 4 leg design is a perennial argument. 3 is easier to level, 4 is more stable, but there is always a difficulty in getting the fourth foot down and load-bearing without upsetting the level. Photographers’ tripods are another illustration: they are very easy to level for a certain amount of stability, but a camera isn’t as dynamic a load as a coffee table would necessarily have to support. When there is a chance of upsetting the tripod, the photographers resort to sandbagging and/or staking them down, which is why many professional tripods come with stake-down and tie-down features. At cafes, I find it occasionally easier to put one of my own feet on the fourth leg that happens not to be on the ground. Besides, they have just successfully transferred the cost of solving the problem to you, the customer, who cares more about it and has more to gain from solving it then the cafe. Isn’t that more efficient? ;~)

I think medical forms go out of their way to be inscrutable on purpose. After all, they don’t want their customers to be able to compare providers on the basis of cost. I can’t remember the exact details, but a few years ago (10?) someone had set up a service (website?) which would allow people to compare doctors (and hospitals, etc.) on the basis of how much they charged for each service by using the AMA’s Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes as an index. The AMA aggressively defends its copyright to those codes, so they won an injunction to stop the service. While I think some of the claims above for sticking to designs you consider to be inefficient are based on dubious beliefs about the nefarious intent of the management, that logic may be valid when applied to the medical establishment. It is, after all, a cartel that has aggressively fought explicit price competition for about 100 years. The RIAA is a bunch of snot-nosed amateurs compared to the AMA. IIRC, they succeeded in getting Medicare/Medicaid to adopt the CPT, which forces all doctors honoring those programs to purchase the annual CPT update, which is of course a windfall to AMA that helps to fund their lobbying practice.

You might add to the list: why hasn’t Apple adopted the multi-button mouse? Why haven’t Asians adopted forks? The suggestion about call-back on 800 lines is brilliant.

Why are the hours of operation of most public services (DMV, court) so inconvenient? McDonald’s does not sell anything mandated by law, yet you can go there from early in the morning to late at night without having to take time off work. The DMV sells a product that *is* mandated by law, yet you always have to take time off work to get it (which is a much harder problem for the working poor). I’m afraid that bad product and process stories seem far more common in the public sector.