Coles has self check in in Toowong!

Stepped into Toowong last night, and the checkouts have all been re-adjusted. They've taken out a couple of the shlowmo normal lanes and put in like 6 self checkouts. This is awesome! I've read about it in the States but doubted we would ever see it here in Oz.

With my job I tend to fly a lot, and I must say one of the coolest things Virgin Blue did is bring in the self service kiosks. Walk into airport, see the HUGE queue but a whole lot of empty kiosks. Since I travel without baggage, I can spend a couple of minutes checking in and done! I think the extra benefit is that those 2 minutes I'm engaged in doing something. Even if waiting in line for a couple of minutes, I'm shuffling along with nothing to do but wait for OTHER people.

People don't like waiting. You see this whenever someone takes a side street to avoid waiting at traffic lights. In my experience, the travel time often ends up longer avoiding the traffic lights, but knowing this I'm still a sucker for taking alternate routes to avoid waiting.

Getting side tracked with analogies on my analogies here :) I didn't actually try the self checkout the other day, but I will next time I'm in. There are friendly staff around there helping people so good time to try it out with the training wheels on. Just think how great this will be when you dash in during quiet times to buy a loaf of bread, and don't have to wait at the only open checking behind the lady doing her weekly shop!

Work unlocked blogger posts?!

So work used to allow us to read blogger blogs, but the url to create posts and comments was blocked. I think it was because *.blogger.com was blocked, which is used for creations, whereas *.blogspot.com was left alone by the proxy overlords.

So absentmindedly commented this morning, then realised I had access! woo! Not sure how long this will ask. Obviously must resist the urge to abuse, so keeping this post short and sweet and not bothering to spell check :P

Go cards, nice idea, poorly implemented

Acursed Go Cards!

This started as a reply comment to one of my previous posts, but as the ranting continued I thought it deserved its own post (especially since its so long since the original post).

So on the way home, Toowong train station is definitely one of the busiest 'off' stops. There is a pyramid set up where steps about 2 carriages apart both lead up to the same platform, and once up that platform, you must move to the single exit point like below:

|---|

X...|

|...|

A...B

|---|

Where X is the exit, A and B are where the two stair cases come up to the platform.

Anyway,X used to be a nice wide exit, which was great, as people would come up the two stair wells at the same time, and a steady stream of people could exit the station.

Now with Go cards, they have put go card 'barriers' up across this exit. There is small exit on the near side (close to A) of the exit, then next to that the barriers begin. Closest is a wide gate that is always open, then 3 or 4 narrow gates that only open when a go card is swiped. So what happens in practice?

For everyone exiting, the nearest exit is the non baricade exit. So those without a go card would prefer to exit there. Those with a go card that have to swipe then prefer the next closest exit, which is the open one that doesn't require a swipe.

So now when coming up the B exit without a go card, you have to cross a sea of people coming up from A and also B trying to get to that very narrow exit. If you can't make it there, you go the only other option, the open go card gate. If there are no go carders, you pass through quickly. But go carders pause and block the gate to swipe there card, so you get a backup.

The backed up line causes another person barrier to form, stopping any go carders from exit A from being able to get to other go card gates. So only the very few Go carders from exit B who have gone right early get a chance to use the narrow gates.

In general, you only see a few people using the narrow go card gates, and I've never seen anyone exitting from stair well 'A' use any of those narrow gates. These narrow gates take up half the previous exit space.

Now double the people are trying to fit through the left side of exit, and half of that space only allows oner person through at a time.

They took a very streamlined exit and screwed it up. Wish they'd looked at crowd dynamics. I choose to presume they were absolutely boneheaded in screwing this up, and it wasn't intentional to frustrate everyone into getting a go card.