8 
is necessary than can be efficiently employed through the remainder 
of the day. 
Some of the chain-store companies have given np trying to supply 
adequate service to the customers during rush periods because it was 
found to be too expensive. As a result, the customers lose much time, 
grow impatient, and are harder to please. The overworked clerks are 
likely to hurry the customers in their selection of goods and to become 
discourteous at times. Numerous customers endeavor to aid the situa- 
tion by selecting as many of their purchases as the store arrangements 
will permit and bringing them to the counter, so they may be waited 
upon more quickly. This partial self-service is rather unsatisfactory 
from both the dealers' and customers' standpoints. As only a few 
packages are wrapped in cash-and-carry stores, the clerk does not 
know certainly whether the customer has paid for the articles he has 
in his hand or not. The customers perform this work with a certain 
amount of mental protest, not knowing whether they will be criti- 
cized by the clerk for adding to the general confusion. 
One of the most satisfying features of the self-service plan is the 
ability to take care of the customers during the rush hours with a 
minimum of inconvenience to the dealer and the customer. It re- 
quires only from one to two persons (depending upon the system of 
checking used) to double the capacity under the self-service plan, 
and these can be drawn from work which is not usually pressing at 
that time. This elasticity of the self-service plan is a very economical 
feature. It eliminates, to a large extent, the extra-help problem, 
which is a rather difficult and unsatisfactory one to both the employer 
and the customers. Persons working odd hours are usually more or 
less inexperienced and unreliable, and generally present more of a 
management problem than does the regular help. 
A psychological advantage is also derived from this elasticity. 
The average person is so constituted that time spent in action, either 
mental or physical, is more satisfying than the same amount of time 
spent in inaction and waiting. Suppose that during a busy period 
of the day a customer has to spend 15 minutes in making a purchase 
of groceries, and that the same amount of time would be required 
whether the goods were bought at a self-service store or at a service 
store. Assume that in the service store the customer spends 10 min- 
utes waiting for a clerk, 5 minutes making purchases, and 2 minutes 
waiting at the checker's counter, and that in the self-service store 13 
minutes are used in making purchases and 2 minutes in waiting at 
the checker's. While the customer may spend the same amount of 
time in each place, it is evident that he would emerge from the self- 
service store in a much better frame of mind, simply because he has 
had to wait unemployed only one-fifth of the time in that store that 
he did in the service store. 
