There had been experiments in Eastern cities with smorgasbord service, where you filled one plate at a counter, paid and took it to your table.
But with money tight this year, instead of going to the checkout line, Zimmerle dropped the gifts off at the layaway counter, paid a small deposit and left the store -- for now.
Let me pick up an ashtray from a dime-store counter, pay for it and put it in my pocket and it becomes a special kind of ashtray, unlike any on earth, because it's mine".
For every person waiting in line, it seems, two glide up to the counter, pay for their waiting stack of to-go boxes and head out happily -- and immediately -- with the loot.
Economists on the right counter that paying off debt will actually inspire more confidence and prompt employers to hire.
But some experts counter that paying too much also distorts the local economy, and encourages skilled professionals to abandon vital low-paid jobs as doctors or engineers to work as taxi drivers or in tourist hotels - which happens in Cuba and parts of the former Soviet Union.
Writing in Airline Business, a trade magazine, he envisaged a version of the upcoming Airbus A380 super-jumbo carrying 760 passengers, all in economy class, buying coffee and food at self-service counters and paying for access to in-flight entertainment or even gambling.
She said she finds herself juggling the cost of her over-the-counter medicines, paying for gasoline to fill her car to make the daily commute to the District from her home in Waldorf and helping her 75-year-old mother, who lives with her.
He partnered with Time in the venture, but in 1973 Time bought him out and he countered by paying $900,000 for a fledgling cable system of 1,500 subscribers that Time owned on New York's Long Island.
