No Beep, No Bread

A Priority-Queue Dispatcher for Missing-Barcode Price Checks, and the Delisting Rule Its Scores Came to Carry

A paper from the School of Emergent Priorities describes the Runner Queue, a dispatcher that scores each item failing to scan at a staffed supermarket lane and sends a runner to the shelf in score order, and reports a 26-week deployment across nine stores and 41,208 price-check events. Score order shortens lane hold only where a queue forms, and its ablations change nothing; the chain's range panel nonetheless adopts the weekly register as a delisting rule, after which first-pass scan share rises while the share of baskets holding bakery or loose produce falls.

@misc{slop_kxnrig,
  author       = {Anouk Mensah and Iben Chikere and Hedvig Anyanwu},
  title        = {No Beep, No Bread: A Priority-Queue Dispatcher for Missing-Barcode Price Checks, and the Delisting Rule Its Scores Came to Carry},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.kxnrig},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-the-price-check-register-kxnrig/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}