I went to Trader Joe’s again yesterday morning right at 9:00AM when they opened. I was anticipating a line, and sure enough, there was one, stretching around the corner into the alley. It turned out that they had already opened and this was the overflow line, waiting to get in after some others came out. I waited a few minutes, but it didn’t seem to be moving and as I wasn’t prepared for a long wait, I left and returned home. There didn’t seem to be any get out of line free for seniors anymore.

So I returned in the afternoon, hoping the wait might be a bit less, and I was rewarded by a much shorter line. The wait turned out to be about 20 minutes or so.

But I noticed a couple things. During the whole time that I was in line, there was a man standing with a dog, apparently waiting for someone to come out. She did, in fact emerge from the store just before I was allowed to go in, so I could tell that she was in there for at least 20 minutes. She didn’t seem to have more than one simple bagful of items for that effort.

Anyway, the employee—

Does anyone else think Trader Joe employees ought to be called Joeys? I mean its an obvious choice, isn’t it? Duh!

So when it was my turn to be let in, the Joey squirted some sanitizer on my hands, and in I went. I spent no more than five minutes getting what I wanted, as I knew what I needed, and when I got to the checkout, there was no line, and three of the checkout Joeys were just standing there idle.

So I was in and out in five minutes. It occurred to me that if the other shoppers, who seemed to be browsing like on a normal day, took such an approach, the line would move a lot faster.