Customers draw line in the sand over CVS checkout
By Beth Teitell
Wednesday, June 15, 2005 - Updated: 07:53 AM EST

Now that the matter of Michael Jackson's innocence has been determined, Americans can finally get a good night's sleep and focus on life's other big question:

When it comes time to pay at CVS, which style of line is preferable, the single feeder, or the multiple lines queueing for each cashier?

Truth be told, before a little incident this morning, I didn't even realize this was an issue. Like all blue-staters, I assumed everyone agreed with me, and felt comfortable enough at a meeting to make an openly pro-feeder comment.

Boy did I hear it:

``What are you crazy?'' two people literally yelled.

``No,'' I yelled back, ``you're crazy.''

We went to our corners to cool off, and a few minutes later an e-mail arrived.

``The feeder line is a handmaiden to chaos,'' one of my antagonists began.

``No matter where you are in line, you have to watch the front: Is there an idiot who is slow to be `next, please'? Is there someone new who doesn't grasp the feeder line concept, sees the checkouts with one person in front of them each, and stands behind them, thus making his or her own individual line as a slap in the face to the feeder line?

``And with the feeder line, you don't get to pick your checker . . . you go to whomever's free. On the individual line, you would make a point of avoiding the Poky Packer, or the Basket Commentator (`Are these any good?' she asks, holding up your box of Sinutab).''

Am I alone here? I wondered.

What about the internal pressure to pick the right line? The blame spiral you fall into when your line (inevitably) stalls and the line next to you - the one you were going to choose - zips along?

What about a little concept called democracy? Is it fair that I should be punished because the cashier with whom I've cast my lot goes on break? Or the woman in front of me - my co-linee - tries to return a 6-month-old purchase, sans receipt?

I got a message from yet another adversary. ``You're the kind of person who invests in mutual funds or something else safe,'' she wrote. In other words: I'm dull. Slow and steady. Plodding.

And yet, isn't that better than being the kind of person who prefers the law-of-the-jungle line? The every-man-for-himself line? The kill-or-be-killed line?

Who knows? All I can say is this: From now on, I'm buying my toiletries from Drugstore.com. That kind of on-line I can handle.