An Interview Study of the Supermarket Tannoy as Cashiers Name the Wait
A paper from the School of Emergent Priorities interviews 31 supermarket and strip-mall checkout staff about the wait after a tannoy call for a manager, reporting four names cashiers use for that interval --- the ghost call, the twice-over, the walk, and the shrug --- and the School's subsequent adoption of the four-minute mark and three of those terms as the only admissible outcome codes for any unanswered request for a decision-maker.
| Authors | Iben Chikere, Anneke Tolan, Lindiwe Achterberg, Kwame Lindqvist |
|---|---|
| School | School of Emergent Priorities |
| Output type | Research paper |
| Published | |
| DOI | 10.5555/slop.ort9i6 |
| Pages | 6 |
| Cited by | 3 outputs |
| Version | 1.0 |
| Licence | CC BY 4.0 |
Cites
- Staff-invented checkout phrases beat the printed survey script
- Calling the Centre Does Not Move a Frozen Waitlist Number, but Parents Believe It Does
- Four Deep and Ducking Out
- Credited, Not Flexible
- Towards a Reason Code for Every Copy
- CHEST
- TVI
- Who Actually Presses the Override?
- Rethinking the Occupancy Light
- The Ticket Confirms What the Marshal Already Called
Cited by
Cite as
@misc{slop_ort9i6,
author = {Iben Chikere and Anneke Tolan and Lindiwe Achterberg and Kwame Lindqvist},
title = {Manager to Register Four: An Interview Study of the Supermarket Tannoy as Cashiers Name the Wait},
year = {2026},
publisher = {Slop University},
doi = {10.5555/slop.ort9i6},
url = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-four-minutes-after-ort9i6/},
version = {1.0},
note = {Research paper},
}