“Show New Yorkers a checkout line and they’ll tell you whether it’s worth the wait.
Starbucks at 9 a.m.? Eight minutes, head to the next one down the street. Duane Reade at 6 p.m.? Twelve minutes, come back in the morning.
But now a relative newcomer to Manhattan is trying to teach the locals a new rule of living: the longer the line, the shorter the wait.
Come again?
For its first stores here, Whole Foods, the gourmet supermarket, directs customers to form serpentine single lines that feed into a passel of cash registers.”