At Menards (for those of you not from the Midwest like me, it's a hardware/home goods store, like Home Depot and Lowe's), I've seen aisle numbers that go into the 300's and 400's - the only place I've seen triple-digit aisle numbers. The next highest ones I've encountered are at Westlake - a hardware store just down the road from my apartment - at that store, they get up to about 75.
As for you all - among all the stores you've been to throughout the country, what are the highest aisle numbers, or checklane numbers, that you've seen?
Good thing you said "in a store" — I've seen aisle number 1900 in a place that counted by 100s, but that was at a convention, not a store.
My local Costco gets well into the 300s
Quote from: jlam on February 12, 2024, 08:00:07 PM
My local Costco gets well into the 300s
Sequentially? Because now I'm envisioning something like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdNmOOq6T8Y
I seem to remember more aisle-numbering in the 100s when I was a kid at local grocery stores and the like.
Next two threads:
"What's the highest aisle number you've been on?"
"What's the lowest aisle number you've never been on?"
My local hypermarket, Prisma Kannelmäki, in Helsinki, has aisle numbers up to 180. It's the highest aisle number I have ever seen. I interested in aisle numbers when I was about 5 years, and I have since then thought whether there are even higher aisle numbers in Finland. I also would like to have lettered aisles, with after 26 would use two-letter (AA, AB, AC....AZ, BA.....ZZ) like spreadsheet columns.
Most large stores I've been in don't actually high-numbered aisles, because they break the store up into lettered zones that each have their own set of numbers. This seems more practical, since if you're looking for aisle J16 and you know that J is housewares, it's easier to find than, say, aisle 76.
When I worked at Stop & Shop, there were aisles numbered 1-24 (well, 1, 2, and 24 didn't have labels), plus a tiny "natural foods" section past 1 (but nobody called it 0). However, when putting up sale tags, some of the other locations (e.g. by the registers, outside, next to the floral department) had aisle "numbers" of 350B and stuff like that. (Regular aisle numbers had letters, too, e.g. 10A was the "lower" side of the aisle and 10B was the "higher" side; these designations were used by employees but not customers.)
At least I think the virtual aisle numbers were three digits.
As for register numbers, they were 1-16, where 1-5 were self-scan, 15 was possible to use but never was, and 16 was where some stuff was stored that made it impossible to use, but other points of sale had higher numbers; I remember one of them (customer service?) being register 30, and there weren't enough computers in the store to assign them all numbers between 17 and 29.
Fred Meyer (our regional hypermarket that was absorbed by Kroger) regularly has large stores that go into the mid-100s for their aisles. Many stores still have maps at their front entrance (some even have printed copies).
Some posts (concerning pronunciation of ai phoneme in aisle, etc.) have been split elsewhere. Continue that discussion (or not) there, please.
Safeway/Fred Meyer are the only stores where I've paid attention to the numbers, and the Scappoose Fred Meyer goes to the mid-70s. My local one only numbers the grocery section, but I recall it having 20 manned checkouts a long time ago.
I can't think of any in a "conventional" store I've been to higher than about 25-30.
Quote from: epzik8 on February 15, 2024, 08:46:51 PM
I can't think of any in a "conventional" store I've been to higher than about 25-30.
I've seen 60+ in hardware stores like Lowe's, but I'm not sure how some places get to triple digits. Do they skip numbers?
Quote from: vdeane on February 15, 2024, 09:07:27 PM
Quote from: epzik8 on February 15, 2024, 08:46:51 PM
I can't think of any in a "conventional" store I've been to higher than about 25-30.
I've seen 60+ in hardware stores like Lowe's, but I'm not sure how some places get to triple digits. Do they skip numbers?
The IKEA in Las Vegas (and I presume other ones, but that's the only one I've been in thus far) has its aisles numbered such that as you look down an aisle the left side has a different aisle number than the right side. (I'm not sure if this is done because it makes the process of locating an item by aisle and bin easier, or if that's the typical way of numbering aisles in Sweden.) If this numbering scheme were used in a store the size of a typical big box store, it could lead to very large aisle numbers.
Quote from: vdeane on February 15, 2024, 09:07:27 PM
I'm not sure how some places get to triple digits. Do they skip numbers?
Triple digits are really no different than alphanumeric aisle numbers.
101 – 120 ≡ A1 – A20
201 – 212 ≡ B1 – B12
301 – 306 ≡ C1 – C6
401 – 416 ≡ D1 – D16
501 – 504 ≡ E1 – E4
601 – 622 ≡ F1 – F22
I wasn't aware that stores even go into triple digits aside from places like warehouse clubs. But (and this is much smaller than some of the other examples mentioned) closer to me the Market Basket in Chelsea goes up to register 38. I forget how many aisles there are since I've only been there once. I think it's like 40 something aisles.
Quote from: vdeane on February 15, 2024, 09:07:27 PM
I've seen 60+ in hardware stores like Lowe's, but I'm not sure how some places get to triple digits. Do they skip numbers?
While I'd expect most places with 3-digit aisle numbers to skip numbers in an effort to encode zones (or perhaps they number different sides of the aisle differently).... below a map I found of a Lowe's online. I could see where a larger store (or one with a more extensive garden department) that didn't use alpha suffixes for a few aisles could reasonably claim more than 100 aisles
(https://pro2-bar-s3-cdn-cf.myportfolio.com/51dc1d20948890fdc1236ce0e63b8137/16d55bcf-f67f-45b2-a270-95d88302712a_rw_1200.png?h=dee5e2f97b150a0ccc363e75bea08002)
Quote from: Scott5114 on February 15, 2024, 09:19:46 PM
Quote from: vdeane on February 15, 2024, 09:07:27 PM
Quote from: epzik8 on February 15, 2024, 08:46:51 PM
I can't think of any in a "conventional" store I've been to higher than about 25-30.
I've seen 60+ in hardware stores like Lowe's, but I'm not sure how some places get to triple digits. Do they skip numbers?
The IKEA in Las Vegas (and I presume other ones, but that's the only one I've been in thus far) has its aisles numbered such that as you look down an aisle the left side has a different aisle number than the right side. (I'm not sure if this is done because it makes the process of locating an item by aisle and bin easier, or if that's the typical way of numbering aisles in Sweden.) If this numbering scheme were used in a store the size of a typical big box store, it could lead to very large aisle numbers.
If I'm understanding you correctly, this is how it's done at Walmart as well.