You're probably joking, but you have spent more time overall in slow queues than you did in fast queues... This is similar to the fact that "your friends have more friends than you do" [0]
My rubric for picking the quickest queue is the one with the lowest total age.
A queue of pensioners will take longer to pack bags, find the right payment card, redeem vouchers and chat with the cashier.
Also tourists and people with many products in their vicinity. Suddenly I really want to collect numbers of this. What's the proportion of age to product count, for example? How many tourists are one pensioner?
It isn’t, but it can easily appear to be the case because you do spend more time in slower queues (simple example: 2 queues with waiting times of one minute and five minutes give an expected waiting time of three minutes, of which you are expected to spend 2.5 (83% of waiting time) in the slower queue), and almost no time in queues that move so fast that you’re out of them before the waiting starts to annoy you.
There may be many checkouts but you will be aware of only three: your own and the one on each side. There is only a one in three chance that yours will be quickest, so you usually feel that you've picked wrong.
