Kansas City Food Blog

​You've done it before -- now you just have a name for it. The Food Section offers a definition for that moment you decide to leave a store because it's simply taking too long to purchase what you want:

walk-a·ways (noun): Retail customers so frustrated by store checkout lines that they leave a shop without completing their purchases.

It's always a difficult decision to walk away because of the time you've got invested in a given errand even before you get to the register. If it's a big-box store, there's the drive over and then the endless trudge down the massive aisles. In some respects, it's easier to leave a smaller store because you're not yet committed.

The Food Section cites the retail-trade Web site Retail Customer Experience, which suggests that 1.6 percent of customers leave the checkout line without buying anything because of frustrations over how slowly the line is moving or a perception that the line is going to be slow.

But it's ultimately an inexact science, because the longer you wait, the more likely you are to stay -- we tend to value the time we've spent waiting more than the future time we'll wait. That applies whether it's concert tickets or the self-checkout line at Costco.

Interestingly, there is no differentiation between self-checkouts and staffed lines (in part because the article on Retail Customer Experience is attempting to sell newfangled queue management devices). But anecdotally, I feel like people are less likely to leave a line where they are responsible for checking themself out. And that could be because they believe they can speed up the process or are likely to be buying fewer items.

Invariably when you do walk away, the items you stash on a random shelf are a small shame trail, products that you were buying to fill a want rather than a need. But it's still sad to leave your purchases behind, especially after all that time you spent bonding with those Halloween Oreos.   

[Image via Flickr: alan fangor]