Why Waiting in Line is Good for Your Soul

In a time-poor world, waiting in line is a modern form of torture.

In fact, our inability to wait has spawned such modern creations as virtual queues, online reservations, drive-by deliveries and self-serve shopping.

Today many modern companies pride themselves on getting you in and out of the door before the deli staff have time to wrap your lunch meats.

And in some organisations, allowing their customers to feel as if they are always at the head of the queue is the definition of customer service.

Dr. Richard C. Larson or “Dr. Queue”, a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Director of the Center for Advanced Educational Services at MIT, is a leader in the operations research field of queuing. His advice to organizations wanting to minimise queuing time includes -

• Use serpentine, rather than individual lines at banks, fast food restaurants, and other establishments
• Entertain, enlighten, and engage those waiting on lines
• Announce delays
• Compensate customers who are not served within a guaranteed period of time
• Let customers serve themselves

But all this talk about minimising the impact of queuing wakes me wonder if it is really about the inconvenience caused or the need to feel in control and powerful.

In an increasingly competitive world, where road rage is a common side-effect of being held up at an intersection, does it really demean us to have to give way to the guy on the right?

The Queue Blues

Research shows that queuing is most torturous at post offices, movie theaters, banks, police departments, sanitation departments, and emergency services, but in my experience it is waiting in a supermarket that often brings out the beast in people.

After happily sauntering the aisles for half an hour - spending longer comparing the calorie content of two frozen dinners than it will take to actually cook and eat them - people turn into dogs on short leashes when it is time to actually ring up their purchases.

Have you ever seen your local supermarket transformed into the starting gate at the Spring Races? Everyone eying off the person in the checkout next to them, desperate to be proven the most effective at choosing a fast lane?

Queuing, it seems, is often perceived as a quaint custom for those with time to waste.

Consider the “ten items or less” checkout, where a bulging shopping basket can earn you the death stare from every customer in the store.

Or the expectations of a shopper with only a tin of soup and a box of pop tarts when they appear behind you at the register. Obviously if you have time to fill a recyclable bag with a selection of real food, intended to be cooked in a real kitchen, you have time to wait for them to complete their purchases first…

Wait Watchers

Why do we hate to wait?

A perceived lack of social justice often underlies frustration with waiting.

The custom of “first come, first served” underpins the culture of queuing in many countries and never is a culture clash more clearly underlined than in the form of the tourist who ignores such an expectation.

The reality is that different nationalities view queuing and the concept of “cutting in line” very differently. In continental Europe for example, people are less inclined to join or form a queue, moving directly to their goal without paying attention to others who are already present.

In countries where a sense of “fair play” is instilled into children before they climb onto their first swing-set, queuing is a structured thing. The English, famous for their reserve, often view the structured queue as a way to avoid talking to strangers.

And in former Communist countries where waiting in long queues was a near-daily occurrence, the act of waiting in line is an institution. It is acceptable, for instance, for a person to leave the queue to use the bathroom and then return to their original place without having to ask permission. In other countries this might get your passport confiscated.

And yet the concept of queuing is a complex thing. In the United States - where many believe that money can lift them out of the mob - fines are imposed on those cutting in line to catch a ferry!

Mind Your Ps and Qs

Wikipedia has amassed much information about queuing and queue-jumpers in particular:

A negative response from the rear of the line is appropriately expected when someone has cut in line up ahead. It is usually viewed with disdain, due to the “wait your turn” aspect of a line. Indeed, a person cutting in line has a 54% chance that others in the line will object. With two people cutting in line, there is a 91.3% chance that someone will object. The proportion of people objecting from behind the cutter is 73.3%, with the person directly behind the point of intrusion objecting most frequently.

But has waiting in line really become such a science? A report on queue management in theme parks reveals the philosophy behind keeping customers in a queue:

If there were to be no queue at all, it would create the impression that the value of the attraction is to some extent diminished. In general terms, one may observe that attractions with short queues tend to attract less public. So, in principle we should not aim at the elimination of queues, but instead concentrate on giving people an option to join the queue, or to skip part of the queue and spend the wait somewhere else.

In other words, give people the impression of not wasting their time by getting them to wait in a virtual queue…

Stop and Smell the Roses

But when is waiting in line really a good thing?

A long queue - like the one I waited in last night while trying to get a taxi - can be a positive experience.

Here are a few suggestions as the benefits of being made to wait:

It keeps things in perspective - Is the meeting so important or the parking space so perfect, that you are prepared to throw a tantrum in public? Being made to wait reminds us that our priorities are perhaps not as urgent as they appear.

It lets you interact with your fellow man - Waiting in line also reminds us that we are social creatures, trapped together on this eternally shrinking planet. Assuming there is nothing to catch your eye on the magazine rack, try striking up a conversation with the shop assistant or your fellow shoppers. Instead of tapping your foot with the fury of an Irish dancer, use that energy on getting to know the people in your neighbourhood.

It leaves you alone with your thoughts - Perhaps a frightening prospect for some, but by meditating the wait away, you might just find the time for the introspective stroll that always alludes you. Use the time to think some positive thoughts or to plan your way through a difficult decision.

It lets you rethink the impulse buy - The salvation of everyone caught up in the hysteria of an end-of-season sale, being made to wait gives you time to reconsider your purchases. Those few minutes waiting for a cash register to free up might be all the time you need to see through the euphoria of fifty percent off, to the diamond-encrusted toothbrush underneath.

You may just find that waiting in line is time well spent!

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