It seems to me that everywhere we shop these days, or any service we require involves long waiting times. Stores used to hire enough clerks, cashiers, and service people to meet the needs of their customers. As a business person who understands how to calculate percentage ratios, this makes no sense to me.

Mostly in business we set up our labor and many other business expenses based on sales figures. So if we consider larger stores doing revenues of $30,000-$50,000/day, and their average cost of labor is only ten percent of their gross sales, which is low by the way, they should have between $3000-$5000/day to spend on wages. Just figure out the math yourself, how many employees would a store be able to hire a day at eight bucks an hour?

I can understand that every business wants to save money and increase profits. When it starts affecting the customers comfort levels in their place of business, should they not put up a red flag, and evaluate their policy? The answer is yes, if two events happen, sales drop drastically, or clients state their minds.

Last time I went into one of these stores my count was about 22 employees in total. They had 5 out of 10 cashes open, maybe one person per department on average, with the exceptions of a few. To find someone to serve me was almost impossible, and then when I did see a clerk she was with anther customer. My wait time was about ten minutes after having to follow her around not to lose my place. Then the person was not sure where the item was located. They had to call someone else, which increased the stay time. Finally I went to the cash and waited in line anther 10 minutes to checkout. My total time to purchase one item including the long walk to the back was about 40 minutes. As a consumer do you have 40 extra minutes per day for each store you shop in? I defiantly do not have that amount of time too spare. Even if I did, it would not seem right to me at all. As a client shopping in their store would it not be fair to respect the fact that time is money for us as well.

We are slowly and systematically being conditioned to accept whatever is dished out at us. Think about what your reaction would be going into a mom and pop business, waiting 40 minutes every time to purchase a pack of gum. Would you go back? However the larger companies have conditioned us to go in spend 40 minutes and keep quite about are experience. The funny thing is we keep going back, it is like being in an abusive relationship, and feeling we can not do better with any other store.