A Better Way To Wait In Line?

Waiting in line, whether to buy tickets or to talk to a customer representative on your phone, wastes time. The way it works now, it’s first-come, first served. Those who camp out 24 hours before the ticket window opens will get their tickets, but they will have wasted 24 hours. Researchers using game theory have found a more efficient–that is, less time-wasting–way of doing this.

Which do you think would be more efficient: Serving people randomly, regardless of their place in line? Or reversing the current practice and having last-come, first served? Find out and find out why after the jump.From Researchers have discovered a better way to wait in line, and you’re going to hate it – The Washington Post:

Think of all the time that you’ve ever spent waiting in line. How many hours have you spent waiting to board an airplane, get a table at a restaurant, use an ATM or a bathroom, or talk to a customer service representative?

The typical first-come, first-serve system of waiting in line is incredibly inefficient, in terms of both time and space. First, it essentially rewards people for wasting their time: Those who arrive first get the goods, but they also spend more hours of their precious time on Earth standing around and waiting. Second, long lines tend to create congestion and bottlenecks that cause problems for others. Think of the traffic jams that form as cars try to leave a football game, or the long boarding line at an airport that snakes across the walkway, getting in everyone else’s way.

In fact, there are far more efficient solutions out there than the standard system of waiting in line. But you’re probably going to hate them.

Two Danish researchers have used the economic discipline of game theory to weigh the costs and benefits of some different methods of waiting in line. The paper analyzes three different systems for waiting in line: the usual first-come, first-serve system; one in which people are served in a random order, regardless of when they arrive in line; and a backwards-sounding idea called a “last-come, first-serve system” that actually serves those who entered the line most recently first. Their research shows that the typical first-come, first-serve system is the least efficient, while the maddening last-come, first-serve system is the best.

In all cases, the researchers were thinking of a situation where a limited number of people begin being served at a given point in time – like people waiting to board an airplane. The people who are doing the serving — i.e., the airline employees — have a fixed capacity, meaning they can only serve a limited number of people per minute. If a bunch of customers arrive at the same time, a bottleneck will form. The researchers assume that everyone in line has two goals: They want to be served as early as possible, but they also want to spend the least amount of time in line that they can.

When it comes to accomplishing these goals, the researchers clearly find that the standard, first-come, first-serve system is the worst of the three systems. The system in which people are served in a random order regardless of when they arrive performed somewhat better, while the last-come, first-serve system turned out to be the most efficient. (It’s kind of difficult to picture how a last-come, first-serve model would work in practice. But it’s easier to understand if you think of virtual line, like people waiting for service online or on the phone, where the person who calls in most recently gets served first, as customer service people become available.)

The difference is that the first-come, first-serve system incentivizes people to spend their time waiting in line, while the last-come, first-serve system penalizes people for it. The first-come, first-serve system basically sets up a trade-off between the order in which people are served and the amount of time they have to spend in line. Customers can choose to a) get served early and spend a lot of time waiting or b) skip the line, but be served late. The last-come, first-serve system, on the other hand, punishes people for something they hate doing anyway: waiting in line. Instead, it incentives people to space out their arrivals, coming exactly when the system has the capacity to serve them, and not before.

Even so, we’re unlikely to see the last-come, first-serve system pop up in airports, or anywhere else, anytime soon. First, there are some practical obstacles: In many situations, it would be hard to stop people from “leaving” the line and rejoining it later, to reduce their wait time. But there’s another, more important objection to the practice: As numerous studies in behavioral economics have shown, people often care more about fairness than they do about efficiency, even when it costs them personally.