Science says we've been lining up wrong

Imagine you’ve been lined up all night for concert tickets. Sore feet, coffee, shared hardship stories with fellow queuers you’ve just met.

 Finally the ticket window opens … and the people at the back of the line are called forward, and served first.

 Anger. Mayhem. This ends up on the local news for sure.

 A new study from the University of Southern Denmark says our whole model of lining up for things is backwards.

 It suggests people wouldn’t have to queue up for hours – and things would be simpler, more efficient and less stressful for everyone – if the last person in line got served first.

 “Last-in, first-out has some really nice theoretical properties, but for sure the implementation would face some obvious challenges,” said Trine Tornøe Platz, an assistant professor of business and economics and co-author of the study.

 “That is why it will probably be more relevant in situations where you don’t have a physical queue. If you did, you would need some practical constraints.”

 The word “resistance” comes to mind.

 But Platz isn’t saying this new model should apply to traditional-style lines. She looks ahead to new ways of queuing up – particularly on the phone or the internet. Under this approach, there would be no advantage at all to being there first.

“It would be more risky to turn up early because if you are not served right away, you would have to wait for a longer time,” she told Yahoo News.

“But if you show up later – even if you are not served right away – you would only have to wait for a shorter period before the people after you have been served.”

People would hold off their arrival, for fear of what Platz calls “being trapped at the front of the queue.”

“This means people will not show up,” she said. “That you will not have this large group of people lined up at the beginning, so that means you will avoid this large queue, and you’ll have lower average waiting time. And, in theory, this will make people better off.”

Phone numbers and ISP addresses would be tracked, so people couldn’t disconnect, reconnect and improve their spot in the queue. Everyone would have to wait, but the waits – overall – would not be as long.

She cites her native Denmark, where crucial tax-assessment information is released online to everyone, at the same time, once every year.

“Often, people are really impatient, so they implemented a queuing situation to handle the heavy traffic on the website just after the release. You cannot line up before, so this example fits the model really well.”

But that’s an academic approach. Is Platz the taxpayer as content to wait as Platz the researcher thinks she ought to be?

“Mmm … possibly,” she smiled.

“I usually do check the tax-assessment notices as early as possible.”

For the moment, then, we do not really have a viable, workable alternative to all that time we spend in line.

There is a mathematical framework that might make things better ... but for now, we’ll have to wait.