At the shops, in your car,
on public transport, even to get into restaurants.
They’re stressful.
Sometimes chaotic.
And they feed our deepest national anxieties.
And the UK is going to be in the back of the queue.
There’s loads of complicated thinking devoted to queueing,
but actually it’s pretty simple.
Queueing occurs when the real​-​time demand for service
exceeds the real-time supply for service.
Well, essentially it comes down to a human desire for fairness
and a simple rule of first come, first served.
So for example if somebody pushes in at the head of a queue,
most people will be actually quite angry about that.
The reason people get angry is because they’re thinking
Is everyone you cut in front of an asshole?
I have children in the car.
I got a cake in the oven.
He’s got three minutes left on the meter.
She’s got a lunch meeting.
Fairness is something deeply ingrained in us.
Studies show that even from a very young age, we have a natural instinct for fair play.
And this feeling is so strong, that it can pretty much override everything else.
​I was in line ahead of him! I was ahead of him!
Yeah, well you shouldn’t have changed line.
Pushing in, or cutting the line is the ultimate no-no,
and in some places this is taken very seriously.
The Wimbledon tennis championships in London provides
an annual example of British queueing at its best.
In case anyone’s forgotten their manners,
visitors are presented with a 29-page guide on how to do it.
And a queuing card with the most important rule of all:
Queue jumping is not acceptable and will not be tolerated.
Oh, butt traps. Stretch us to the front.
No cutting!
All right dudes, chill! We’ll wait.
A study of U2 fans found that they were just as irritated
by people cutting in behind them as cutting in in front.
Which suggests that these long queues worked as social systems, just like societies do.
Another study in the 1980s was led by the psychologist Stanley Milgram.
He instructed his students to fan out across New York City,
and push into queues between the third and fourth person.
Surprisingly only 10% of queue-jumpers were confronted
and thrown out of the line.
Most of us will tut and sigh and seethe all right.
But we won’t actually do anything.
Don’t butt!
So we know that queuing is grounded in fairness.
But that doesn’t mean we have to enjoy it.
And that can definitely be a problem if you’re trying to sell people stuff.
They might spend an hour and a half browsing
through a shop having an absolutely wonderful time.
But then they will take away the bad experience of five seconds in the queue.
Businesses know all this and, working with psychologists,
they’ve developed ways to stop you quitting and going elsewhere.
Krispy Kreme let you watch their doughnuts being made
in a kind of viewing gallery behind the glass.
Disneyland show you average waiting times.
To help you feel more in control.
But too much information can backfire.
We’ve done experiments in Boston with my students in a bank
where we had a digital read-out of the anticipated wait
and it was correct to the nearest second.
And what happened is that it focused people’s attention
on the duration of the wait.
The information was so precise, the waiting was all people could think about.
And even though long queues are a massive pain,
there is a silver lining - for businesses at least.
Long queues mean your product is highly desirable.
And studies have shown, that once you are in the queue
the longer it gets, the more you’re willing to pay.
But while psychology can be used against you to keep you in a queue,
there are definitely ways to turn it to your advantage as well.
So what is the best way to queue?
Choose your line carefully.
One person with loads of items will probably be quicker
than lots of people with only a few items.
Scanning multiple items is quick, it’s all the other parts of the transaction
that can be unpredictable.
If you have a choice of left or right, go left.
Studies show most people, being right-handed,
have an inbuilt bias to turn right if all other things are equal.
So try turning left instead.
Pick a queue in clear view of the cashier.
If the cashier can see how their work is shortening the queue,
they tend to work faster.
But whatever you do, stay calm,
don’t let the queue get to you.