NEW CASTLE —
It's that time of the year when I venture out to stores to do my Christmas shopping.
Since my knees are bad, I try to limit my shopping experience in the retail establishments to around five minutes.
This means after selecting my presents, I have to be on my toes to get to the fastest check-out lane possible.
I have perfected a state-of-the-art method for doing this.
Out of the kindness of my heart, I would like share it with you.
The first thing you need to do is check out the gender of the people in line.
Avoid, if at all possible, lines with women in them.
Women always buy more than men, and it takes them longer to check out.
This make for a longer wait in line.
There are reasons why women slow up the check-out process.
First, they take their buggy to the counter, and unload each item, one by one.
If there is clothing involved, they lay it neatly on the counter, and maybe smooth it out a little bit.
I'm not sure why they do this. The cashier just crumbles it up and throws it in a bag.
A man is much faster at this. Since he doesn't use a cart, he just drops his pile on the counter.
This saves oodles of time.
Women talk to the cashier about how pretty a certain item they chose is.
Men are quiet, and just want to get out of the store as quickly as possible.
What really slows up the line occurs after the cashier tells the total amount due to the female.
She puts her purse on the counter, opens it, and fumbles around for the wallet with all the charge cards in it.
After she finds the wallet, she then has to make the big decision on which card she is going to use, and hopefully pick the one that isn't maxed out.
I will give credit where credit is due.
Women are probably a little faster than men at sliding the card through the credit card machine. He just doesn't have enough experience at this.
After everything is verified, she puts the card back into her wallet and reopens her purse. She carefully places the wallet back in it, closes the purse, and then loads the cart with all her stuff.
A man opens his wallet to the credit card slot, and takes out the one card he has.
After the clerk tells him where to slide it, he does it with precision.
The card goes right back into his wallet, and back into his pocket.
He picks up his item, and walks out of the store.
I'm not saying that the man is better at choosing presents than a women, he's just faster at it.
OK, so you didn't want the salad shooter.
At least he got you something.
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About Gary Church: Gary is a columnist and contributing writer for The News. He’ll share his thoughts on this blog each Tuesday and Friday.
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