By Tony Samson
“QUEUEING” theory was first established in 1909 for the Copenhagen telephone exchange. (Note that the word, a synonym for lining-up, is the only one with five consecutive vowels.) It was a mathematical model to figure out the requirements of handling calls and how to line them up for proper servicing for a designated number of operators. Queueing as a concept has moved a lot since then, and applies to more situations including airline check-ins, taxi bays, and internet shopping.
The queue is a soft feature of economic development. It promotes egalitarianism without undue consideration of privilege and status. The line promotes the principle of first-come-first-served, and the inventor of the model in 1901, Agner Erlang, has not been given the credit he deserves.
Rather than a disorganized mob fighting for the attention of a doughnut counter clerk or available cab on a rainy day, a line literally straightens out the mess. All who require attention are served in the order they arrived. There is no jostling and shouting. The line moves forward in a civilized fashion.
Lines have many shapes. The most efficient is the “snake,” which is used by theme parks for their rides. It’s a folded line that seems short until one joins it and realizes how it curves around. There’s a sign on its short tail — 30 minutes to the front of the line.
The best line is the single file with only one person behind another. The fuzzy line involving knots of people chatting away beside the approximate spine of a barely recognizable column is easily infiltrated by line-jumpers who strike up a conversation seeming to be part of a waiting cluster — do you have the time, Miss? These fuzzy lines are difficult to police or enforce.
In an empty men’s washroom, the urinal farthest from the entrance gets used first. When the toilet is partially occupied, the new patron goes to a free stall, with an empty one between users if possible. With a full toilet, say, at the intermission of a theatrical event or ballgame, the single line allows the first in line to go to the next free urinal.
Lines for the ladies’ room tend to be chattier. Males do not converse inside the washroom, and never when they are doing their business. If they do converse, they face the wall and not each other for fear of being misunderstood or consumed by Freudian envy. They try not to wink. With the addition of new sex categories, the queueing theory has broken down a bit — No, I’m in the right place.
What about those who do not feel the need to line up?
In a patronage culture such as ours, those who disrupt the queue include the following: relatives of the security guard, name droppers with loud voices (this way, ma’am), assertive expatriates who berate guards (I just took a pee break), government functionaries, and the spouses and mistresses of any of the above. When the queue is long and alert, the line skipper is brought through a side door and processed off-line. There is no use in calling out these line jumpers as it only betrays one’s poverty of connection.
Of course, the internet has speeded up the waiting in line. (“Get online, not in line.”) For theater or concert tickets, the physical line to the box office (where the tickets were exclusively sold before) has virtually shrunk if not disappeared.
For inevitable lines like cars passing through a toll booth, there is the e-pass solution for separate and faster lines. There is too the creative invention of the Filipino featuring a walking toll booth. The long line is cut in the middle by ticket takers that provide receipt and change to those at the rear half. This system does not allow later customers to skip ahead as they are still in their places as the line moves. It just effectively increases the number of booths to service the peak times.
Lines, with the discipline and fairness they impose, promote an honest society. When the position in a line no longer determines sequence on servicing, other arbitrary priorities dictate who gets served first. And then the line between right and wrong gets blurred.
Perhaps, the first salvo against corruption can promote a simple message — all should fall in line or go online. The only query allowed of those already in a physical queue is simple — is this the line?
Tony Samson is Chairman and CEO, TOUCH xda.
