SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
It seems obvious. You arrive at the checkouts and see one queue is much longer than the other, so you join the shorter one. But, before long, the people in the bigger line zoom past you and you've barely moved towards the exit.
When it comes to queuing, the intuitive choice is often not the fastest one. Why do queues feel like they slow down as soon as you join them? And is there a way to decide beforehand which line is really the best one to join? Mathematicians have been studying these questions for years. So can they help us spend less time waiting in line?
The intuitive strategy seems to be to join the shortest queue. After all, a short queue could indicate it has an efficient server, and a long queue could imply it has an inexperienced server or customers who need a lot of time. But generally this isn't true.
[...] Once you're in the queue, you'll want to know whether you made the right choice. For example, is your server the fastest? It is easy to observe the actual queue length and you can try to compare it to the average. This is directly related to the mean and standard deviation of the service time via something called the Pollaczek-Khinchine formula, first established in 1930. This also uses the mean inter-arrival time between customers.
Unfortunately, if you try to measure the time the first person in the queue takes to get served, you'll likely end up feeling like you chose the wrong line. This is known as Feller's paradox or the inspection paradox. Technically, this isn't an actual logical paradox but it does go against our intuition. If you start measuring the time between customers when you join a queue, it is more likely that the first customer you see will take longer than average to be served. This will make you feel like you were unlucky and chose the wrong queue.
So, before you choose a queue to join, put the screaming kids down and carefully note the average serving time in each queue, measure the queue length, and then project which will get you through to a completed transaction quickest.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 08 2017, @09:42PM (2 children)
Just look for the line with pathetic single men [deadhomersociety.com].
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday May 08 2017, @10:55PM (1 child)
Pick the queue with the prettiest person on the till.
Doesn't mattr if you have to spend a bit longer in the queue, if you have a something nice to look at.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 08 2017, @11:34PM
Or the best ass in front of you in line.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday May 08 2017, @10:07PM (3 children)
Without failure, the person in front of me always has some rude stupid-ass problem. They got the wrong size bag of popsicles for the sale and we have to wait for somebody to fetch the right one for them. They pull out 50 coupons and challenge each expired one regardless of its validity. They don't know how to work the fucking chip-thingy and have to have somebody work it for them.
Compounding this problem, in larger stores at least, is that the Jew management have required a manager's key to do damn-near anything useful on the register, including something as simple as voiding a transaction, because muh lost pennies from the 0.0000000001% of employees who go rogue and commit fraud. So, when previously, the cashier hit a snag they could suspend or void the transaction and wheel the others through more quickly before restarting with the problem customer. Now they just make everybody wait, because do to things the older and faster way requires a fucking act of congress and takes the same amount of time anyway.
On the road it's usually the same kind of obnoxious dickhead, usually driving something like a Prius with Hillary or Bernie 2016 stickers on the back, who drive super-slow in traffic and let everybody else and their mom in front of them (people who don't deserve to be let in, the ones who lurch ahead in the fast lane and then try to merge 5 lanes right at the last minute to get to their off-ramp). If it weren't for limp-dick weenies like those Prius drivers, there'd be a lot less incentive for everybody else to drive like douchebags. If a motherfucker tries to pull that shit on me then it's a game of chicken, and they always lose. That's my fucking lane and if you're one of those cheatin' assholes, then you ain't gettin' in. Maybe the pussy behind me will let you in there, and I tend to stop pretty abruptly in traffic, so you'd better be at least as good a driver as I am, or else dickheads will keep cutting in front of you.
You can do all these fancy-schmancy multithreaded queue simulations and quantify things all you want, but what almost always gets your line ground to a standstill are dumb fucking douches and, just your luck, one of them is right in front of you!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @01:43AM
Worse yet was Christmas shopping at K-Mart. After waiting 20 minutes the old lady in front of me was buying 50 cans of cat food, then complains that the price should be 8 cents less per can. The cashier starts scanning each can to delete the purchase, then scan each can again manually entering the price. After about 10 cans I left, and left the cart in line. I only shop at Amazon since then.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @01:59AM
We're just forsaken, it's the universes way of putting us in our place. Never happens when I have time, only when I'm in a rush.
Or I go to the bank and it's the same deal; Some jesting, mongoloid retard arranging their life finances with the counter clerk during my lunch break. Always the person one or two people infront of you. And they never appreciate how rude they are until you slam them right in their stupid, insolent face. Amirite?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @02:16AM
> Without failure, the person in front of me always has some rude stupid-ass problem.
Its called karma. You may not ever lose that +1 default post score here, but God is making sure you pay the price for all that shitposting anyway.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by vux984 on Monday May 08 2017, @10:07PM (8 children)
There's a Mathematical Formula for Choosing the Fastest Queue ... but its useless because to use it you'd need to waste so much time measuring the queues that any time advantage is lost. And even if you do spend the time, its still a gamble because there is too much uncertainty within the small sample size of a queue that you'll still lose as often as not.
Most queues are +/- 1 in length anyway. Its pretty rare there will be 10 people in one line up and 6 in the next, unless the one with 6 has 1 guy with 4 shopping carts full of stuff or something.
In practice, queue selection is usually a function of looking at who is in the queue and who is servicing the queue. Bonus points if you shop there frequently and can assess cashiers directly rather than on broad stereotypes. But in general in my experience, evaluating queue times mathematically over the whole shift is less important than who is in the queue right now.
And that it is likely that, all things being equal, queues with more men are likely to move faster than queues with more women (men are less likely to use coupons or challenge sale prices or limits and more likely to usetc) and younger people likely move faster than older (the elderly generally seem more chatty). And avoid the trainee cashier. There's other factors... like an attractive girl with some boys queued up... maybe a boyfriend, or maybe wannabe boyfriend... that might stall the line. Or a guy with a shopping cart in it with nothing but 8 flats of bottled water in his cart -- he might take up as much space as a 'regular shopper' but he's going to move through a lot quicker. Or an elderly individual making chit-chat and reminiscing with the people in the queue... he's probably going to stall the cashier with stories too...
But you never know. All it takes is for the person ahead of you have expired yogurt in their cart, or something that wasn't priced properly...and you can't use math to predict that.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Monday May 08 2017, @10:30PM (1 child)
queue selection is usually a function of looking at who is in the queue and who is servicing the queue
Quite. Among other things, look out for what I call "spectators", which are people in the queue merely accompanying the one doing the transactions; these peel away when they reach the front. I have seen as many as six people dissolve into a single transaction. Small children with adults are obvious examples of queue-lengthening spectators, but also look out for geriatrics accompanied by minders (who will actually do the transaction and any small groups of people chatting together.
I often go over a toll bridge with queues of cars and lorries (trucks, for the USA) at the 6 or so toll booths. Lorries can be 3-4 times physically longer than cars, but have the same transaction time. This does not seem to occur to most other car drivers and the dickheads just join the physically shortest queue.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @01:13AM
Plus truck drivers are going to know what the fsck they're doing. When I used to drive truck and headed through Chicago on a near weekly basis, I pretty much had every toll memorized and the cash ready to go. No fishing for wallets, spare change, screaming kids in the back, etc etc. Just hand the lady (or dude) in the toll booth some bills or exact change if I had it, get the receipt to claim the expense, and go.
Of course these days all the big trucks have an I-Pass or whatever it's called for Chicago. I think they were integrating it with some other toll systems out East when I moved on from that job. Was an interesting lifestyle, definitely had its perks, but just not the career for me.
Going way off on a tangent, I still wish I could give it another go one last time before truck drivers become a thing of the past, but these days I'm one of the people automating that career away for good. Kinda sad in a way, but this pays better and I've got obligations now, etc etc. You only get to be a free-wheeling 20-something once.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday May 08 2017, @10:53PM (3 children)
Being a lazy fuck, I frequent only 2 or 3 stores -- and after many repeated instances when those lines were unacceptably long, I would inform those in line with me that management got bonuses for keeping payrolls low, and I used to work in stores, and that at any given moment there are at least 3 other employees not including the manager who were sitting in the back with their thumbs up their asses doing jack shit. Sometimes I would simply leave my groceries on the floor and walk right out, cutting off my nose to spite my face. This started having the effect of the staff calling for more checkers right as I entered the store. Not exactly the right solution to the problem, but it at least works for me.
Protip: The pharmacies and photo lab sections (and in some grocery stores the Starbucks and Juice franchises) are allowed and able to ring up groceries (other than alcohol) unrelated to their departments, though most customers are either unaware or too well-mannered to take advantage of that rule. I used to "short-circuit" waiting in the lines at a beach drug store by having the ice cream guy ring me up, since I was usually buying only 1 or 2 items nobody else got pissed off.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Monday May 08 2017, @10:59PM (1 child)
In Target, I have used the returns counter to pay for my purchases. But never if there is a queue there, because it takes so long to process a return.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @02:28AM
Yep, I do that all the time too.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday May 09 2017, @04:11AM
Sometimes I would simply leave my groceries on the floor and walk right out, cutting off my nose to spite my face.
It's called negative feedback loop in a language which they can interpretate ;)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday May 08 2017, @11:04PM (1 child)
Indeed. The one thing left out of this formula and TFA's discussion, as you rightly point out, is customers. All it takes is one person with a handful of disorganized coupons, the speed of a tortoise, and a change purse which they'll go fishing for pennies in, and you might as well have gone in the queue with 3 more people in it. In that case, the median arrival time or transaction time or efficiency of the cashiers will make no difference.
Anyhow, once you make your choice, you generally just settle in. Patience is indeed a virtue, and as I grow a bit older, I find it just doesn't matter that much to get all worked up about something I can't change. I understand sometimes one is actually in a legitimate hurry over something, but most of the time, will it really ruin your day to leave the store 3 minutes later?
And IF you are the type who obsesses over the length of queues and can't stand to wait more than absolutely necessary, go at a different time. I know some people have work and family schedules that prohibit it, but frequently there are times when stores are significantly less busy. Many grocery stores seem to do little business after ~8pm, and I find it's often the most pleasant time to shop. I tend to walk fast and carry a basket rather than use a large cart when possible, mostly because I hate wasting time. During most of the day, you'll have to dodge people left and right, wait for someone to clear an aisle or wait while they puzzle for 45 seconds over what brand of pre-grated Parmesan cheese they want to buy, etc. Often one wastes a lot more time dodging people and waiting to get around them in a busy store than in the checkout line. Going on weekends is generally a very bad choice, but if one has to, Sunday evenings often seem significantly less crowded (in my experience).
I'm not saying these are universally applicable rules, and depending on your schedule, other times may work better. (E.g., Many grocery stores open at 7am or 8am, and they can often be nearly empty on weekday mornings except for employees stocking shelves.) Of course, I think many of these times are seen as inconvenient for a lot of people, who don't feel like shopping late on a weeknight or whatever. Well, then you make your choice and stand in line.
Because I choose better times to shop, I VERY rarely end up standing in line behind more than one person to checkout. So this entire discussion in TFA seems designed for a strange audience, i.e., one so deathly afraid of waiting in line that they'll stand there with a stopwatch and collect data before choosing a line, but one NOT so deathly afraid of standing in line that they'd just choose to shop at a more ideal time when there are little to no lines at all.
(Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Tuesday May 09 2017, @01:17PM
i guess this is getting into 'get off my lawn' territory, but i really resent presumptuous pukes who get in the 'express 10 items only' line with 15-20 -or more!- items...
i know it is not a big thing, but -dog damn it- i don't do that to other people, why you treat all the rest of us like it is your world and the rest of us are just clogging it up for you ? ? ? fuck inconsiderate people like that...
probably the same entitled/clueless pukes who *have* to park in front of the store (you know, where the foot wide yellow lines scream at you NOT to park), because, well, because their individual convenience far outweighs the inconvenience they are causing for every one else... again, THEY are saying 'fuck you' to me, what else do they expect me to say to them ? ? ?
can't STAND people like that; i am a loner who wishes the rest of the world would FOAD, and *I* show more consideration and respect in public for my fellow nekkid apes than so-called normies do... hypocritical fucks...
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Monday May 08 2017, @10:09PM (1 child)
By the time you've stood there gawping and making notes as people go through the tills, more people will have joined the queues and you'll end up leaving later than if you'd just followed your intuition.
When it comes to queuing, the intuitive choice is often not the fastest one.
What is meant by "often"? 50% of the time? Or more like 20%?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday May 08 2017, @10:28PM
The hard part is to quantify the intuition.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 08 2017, @10:11PM (4 children)
The most efficient way to go is with a single queue that feeds to multiple check-out operators.
Fry's, BestBuy, Barnes and Noble all do it that way.
(Score: 2) by deadstick on Monday May 08 2017, @10:50PM
Some supermarkets in my area tried that for a while and then stopped. I'm told the resulting long line scared people off...perhaps there's an IQ differential between the electronics store and supermarket clienteles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @12:16AM
That is indeed the fastest way to serve customers. You don't end up wasting time stuck in the "slow" queue this way. It sidesteps the queuing problem. You could think of it as dynamic scheduling versus static scheduling, with dynamic being the single line of folks getting the first available casher. Analogies arise with assigning tasks to a CPU....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @01:02AM (1 child)
I think there is a limit on this. With 3-4 cashiers (our local B&N), the single input line doesn't involve a lot of walking from the end of the line to the furthest register/clerk. At the big grocery store I use, there are ~two dozen stations across the front of the store. If the queue ended in the middle of the stations, there would still be a long walk to either end, if that opened up first. Also, with all the impulse-buy crap in the lanes, you can't see when a line is clear--so there would also have to be a couple of traffic directors sending people off the end of the queue.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @02:13AM
> so there would also have to be a couple of traffic directors sending people off the end of the queue.
Frys and BestBuy do that when the line is long. It should be easy to automate though, as soon as a cashier is done with a customer just have a sign at the head of the queue flash the number of the available cashier.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kaszz on Monday May 08 2017, @10:21PM (1 child)
Pay attention to:
* Does the cashier look experienced and speedy?
* Lot's of items to expedite in each shopping cart?
* Any customer types that look like they may need a long time at the checkout?
This takes a split second to view and evaluate if you are experienced thus no need to stand by and measure.
It's a realtime application. Ie the evaluation has to be faster than it takes for the situation to change too much. There's also an aspect of the "hidden node problem" because you can't see all checkouts at the same time. So once you have evaluated one view, you have to weight the probability of better outcome in the next checkout(s) against the current ones. Best practice is usually to sweep them all and get the benefit of better luck probability over changed circumstances for the worse. The statistical truth will benefit you.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Tuesday May 09 2017, @07:02AM
My strategy: I always choose the prettiest cashier.
My tip to everyone else: don't stand in line behind me, because it's likely to be the slowest.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday May 08 2017, @10:38PM
If you hate waiting in lines, then China is the place for you.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Monday May 08 2017, @10:39PM (2 children)
Life is too fucking short to be queued up just to make some rich fucker in the Owning Class a little bit richer.
The easiest solution is to drop your shit on the floor, put it on a shelf, and just fucking leave the store. If it's clear that the store cannot get me out in less than 5 minutes, then the store does not get anything from my wallet. Period. I use the quick check-out stands in the first place, and then I choose non peak times to do any grocery shopping that I need.
If I really want the groceries, I'm not averse to sitting in the coffee shop reading, while my cold stuff is shoved in the nearest freezer. I'll wait for the line to free up.
What I never do? Wait in those fucking lines. They only exist because of the rich fucking cunts getting richer off us. It's not like I refuse to be in line, I just refuse to be in A line when there are in fact TWENTY fucking lines, but 2 fucking employees. So if those rich fucking hell bound cunts want any of my money, they can be stop being so fucking avaricious and hire another 2-3 fucking employees which would speed up the line greatly.
Seriously? Do not most people realize they got a second job handed to them waiting in fucking line because the rich cannot be bothered to pay what is required to eliminate, or at least greatly mitigate, the lines? It's because they want to be richer by not paying an American a living wage to do the work. So who does the work instead? That's right! You DO :)
Excessive queuing is just one more way that the average citizen is being fucked by the rich. So fuck them right back. Stop buying their shit, and fuck over their queues.
Lastly, you know what you find in small mom and pop shops most of the time? Smaller queues. Shop local. Shop small. Win-Win-Win.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @12:16AM
I no longer queue up at the grocery store because I no longer shop at grocery stores. I've got a subscription to Soylent Gold now. Soylent Gold is delivered right to my door. It's easy to prepare, it needs no cooking and no refrigeration until it's prepared, it has a flavour to it, and it contains real gold. It's everything I want from a nutrient preparation, and best of all, it's made from rich people. The owner of the company really put his heart into it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @06:26PM
Keeping people waiting in line means also more compulsive last minute shopping.
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday May 08 2017, @10:46PM (1 child)
Those 3 things are quick and easy to assess too:
1/ Is the cashier quick when they ring items?
Z/ Is the cashier the kind who just does their job, or the chatty type who likes to socialize a bit with each customer who passes through? Because the socializing can be nice when it happens with you, but it slows you down when it happens with customers before you.
3/ Is the line composed of 3 people with 20 items each, or 6 people with 3 items each? Logic would dictate that you should pick the latter (only 18 items total), but I always go for the former because what usually takes forever is customers paying (you know, counting their cash, producing a million vouchers, looking for another credit card because the first one is maxed out, etc). The paying phase is pure overhead in the process - not to mention the chit-chat time that usually happens at the same moment, if the cashier is the socializing type - so you're better off waiting for fewer customers who have a lot more items to ring through.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday May 08 2017, @11:02PM
I've already described how I handle 3, but there is also a way to address 1 and 2 by speeding up the checker (and by extension, the line).
Look really fucking uncomfortable. Put your hands in your pockets, dart your head to different things around you but never directly at anybody, maybe glance upward at the ceiling and get a nice look at those loss-prevention cameras, breathe deeply and irregularly, shuffle around and tap your fingers. Look at all the stuff the people behind you are buying and eyeball it judgmentally. I guarantee the checker will pick up on it and speed things up just to get your awkward uncomfortable ass the fuck out of the line.
Super-autists and OCD types are naturally gifted with this ability, though they may not even realize it.
The only downside to this approach is that there is collateral damage, you will make everybody else uncomfortable as well. They will start to shift and fidget and mirror your actions.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday May 08 2017, @11:17PM
Does the trick of having your girlfriend put a pillow under her dress still work, or are people now Candy-crushing too much to even notice?
Queues are when other people check their FB one more time, just in case the 20 minutes in the supermarket made them missing some life-changing event. Which of course makes them unprepared when their turn comes, slowing down the queue...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday May 08 2017, @11:20PM
One thing that other comments haven't yet discussed is this business about the "inspection paradox" and how it's against "intuition."
It's incredibly basic, though. Suppose customers take either 2 minutes or 5 minutes for a transaction. With an equal distribution, the average length of transaction is obviously 3.5 minutes. BUT if you think for just a moment, you'll realize that if transaction lengths are equally distributed, then (ceteris paribus) you're more likely to arrive during a 5-minute transaction than a 2-minute one.
(I assume most people can see why, but if not -- imagine a 70-minute span, which will have ten 5-minute transactions and ten 2-minute ones. Obviously 50 minutes out of that 70 minutes will be spent on the longer transactions, so if you arrive at an arbitrary time, it's more likely to be during a longer transaction.)
I didn't even know there was a name for that until the summary here. It just seemed like basic logic to me.
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Tuesday May 09 2017, @12:23PM
It helps to know a couple of things, like the priority of the store in selecting cashiers.
Wal-Mart's priority, for example, is that all queues appear to move at the same speed, or as close to it as possible, so that customers don't feel like they picked the wrong line. Tricks they use to try to do this include having the slowest cashiers in the express lanes; faster cashiers typically operate specialized registers (like ones with access to cigarettes). There's problems with Wal-Mart's implementation of course - most of the COS (front-end supervisors) don't do their jobs properly and manage the queues to maintain these objectives. They're usually ghosts or staring vacantly into space back at their station hidden out of sight until called. Sam's Club ones are a little better about this; they are more likely to be proactive, partly because they are paid better, partly because the working environment is more positive in those places.
You see different things at places like Target. They're laid out to confuse queue lengths to customers. It removes the need to micromanage things that Wal-Mart has.
The one-queue-multiple-registers thing that Kohl's does really seems to work pretty okay for them. These other stores should try figuring that out sometime; I'm not sure it scales up to the size that Wal-Mart operates at though without the COS doing their jobs.