Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And to introduce today's topic, I wanted to start off
Speaker 1: by referring to a news article that I found from
Speaker 1: last year. So this is a local news article from
Speaker 1: the Santa Clara, California area from March. Remember remember that
Speaker 1: scary time back when there was a lot of panic
Speaker 1: buying going on because COVID was just starting to dawn
Speaker 1: on people and suddenly everybody was like, oh, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: we gotta stock up. We don't know when we're gonna
Speaker 1: be leaving the house, and so forth. And so this
Speaker 1: article is referring to the fact that there were long
Speaker 1: lines at the cost Co in Santa Clara, California in March.
Speaker 1: And one element of the story that I thought was
Speaker 1: very interesting was that the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff Station
Speaker 1: was on Twitter at some point begging people not to
Speaker 1: call nine one one because of people cutting in front
Speaker 1: of them in line. Their tweet read, please don't call
Speaker 1: nine one one because people are cutting in front of
Speaker 1: you at line at the store. It ties up valuable
Speaker 1: resources for real emergencies. But the funny thing is that
Speaker 1: you would have to say this at all. I mean,
Speaker 1: it seems kind of obvious to me that somebody cutting
Speaker 1: in front of you in line at the store is
Speaker 1: very rude. But this is not a police matter. But
Speaker 1: I've noticed a lot of you know, informal reports and
Speaker 1: uh and and even in kind of a recurring theme
Speaker 1: of don't be this person viral videos online lately is
Speaker 1: people calling the cops on someone allegedly cutting in front
Speaker 1: of them at the drive through line at burger King
Speaker 1: or something like that. And it makes me wonder, why
Speaker 1: would it be common for people to believe that cutting
Speaker 1: in line at a customer service point is a crime
Speaker 1: on a level that merrits the summoning of armed officers
Speaker 1: of the law. Well, I guess we we should point
Speaker 1: out that if if there is a situation where one
Speaker 1: party or even two parties are sort of violating the
Speaker 1: you know, the social norms of of lines and waiting
Speaker 1: in line, that itself may not be a crime, but
Speaker 1: you could imagine where the resulting dynamics could rise to
Speaker 1: the point of a crime. I mean, if if if
Speaker 1: it becomes an aggressive enough encounter, you know, then it
Speaker 1: it could rise to the level of threats and assaults.
Speaker 1: So it's not to say that it's an it's something
Speaker 1: that's in an entire separate universe and could never rub
Speaker 1: up against those those real criminal um activities. But yeah,
Speaker 1: did the mere act of someone just like jumping ahead
Speaker 1: of you in line, uh and and not acknowledging you
Speaker 1: like that that does that is certainly not a police matter.
Speaker 1: Police have better things to do than get called about that, right,
Speaker 1: But it's funny that at least some people in two
Speaker 1: watively think of the idea that somebody allegedly cut in
Speaker 1: front of them in line at at at a customer
Speaker 1: service situation is on the level of being you know,
Speaker 1: robbed at gunpoint or something that you need to get
Speaker 1: the cops here about this. But you see people react
Speaker 1: very um alarmingly at times. Oh yeah, for instance, okay,
Speaker 1: so so right before this podcast, and I got some
Speaker 1: coffee and there was no line to order the coffee,
Speaker 1: but there was a line to wait on the coffee,
Speaker 1: which was an interesting experience I'll get back to, but
Speaker 1: it reminds me of a very recent, uh experience I
Speaker 1: had at a coffee shop at an airport where there
Speaker 1: was a line to get the coffee, and then there
Speaker 1: was a long wait to receive the coffee. And I
Speaker 1: everybody's wearing a masks at the at the coffee establishment,
Speaker 1: so it's it's extra difficult to hear what people were saying.
Speaker 1: And I had one of those moments where I thought
Speaker 1: my name was called my last name and I and
Speaker 1: I went forward and I almost touched the bag of
Speaker 1: someone else's order, and it was it was this older
Speaker 1: couple and um, and I was like, oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I thought they said lamb and the the uh the
Speaker 1: wife of the of the husband and wife pair here.
Speaker 1: She was like, oh, that's all right, it happens all
Speaker 1: the time, and the and you know, that's that's that's reasonably.
Speaker 1: She was like, oh, that's happened to us. But the
Speaker 1: man he was, he was angry and he like grabbed
Speaker 1: it and he was like making evils at me, like
Speaker 1: I was trying to steal his food. And as he
Speaker 1: marched off, trying to remember what was it he was saying,
Speaker 1: he was not saying good day, sir. He was saying oh,
Speaker 1: he was saying bye bye. He was he was like
Speaker 1: spitefully saying bye bye to me, which is something I
Speaker 1: had never heard before. I've never heard bye bye used
Speaker 1: as a so aggressively. But it was a very weird experience.
Speaker 1: And I guess if I'm going to try and put
Speaker 1: myself in in in his shoes, if he thought that
Speaker 1: I was actually trying to to break in line and
Speaker 1: just randomly steal whatever food and coffee he had ordered, um,
Speaker 1: then it's kind It's kind of like cutting in line
Speaker 1: can be equated to theft, like if everybody's in a
Speaker 1: line to get the same thing at a store, like
Speaker 1: it's a lemonade stand, they only sell the lemonade. If
Speaker 1: someone cuts in front of me, then they are on
Speaker 1: some level stealing my lemonade. I don't know. It's amazing
Speaker 1: that even at the level of remove of you describing
Speaker 1: an experience that you almost had but didn't. I felt
Speaker 1: the dragon flies, you know, a light in my stomach,
Speaker 1: Like it was just just just terror at the idea
Speaker 1: of such a faux paw right, I mean, because I
Speaker 1: guess it does gollustrate two different energies like we we
Speaker 1: I think a lot of us, if not most of us,
Speaker 1: have that fear of transgressing the social norm of standing
Speaker 1: in line and waiting on food and service. But on
Speaker 1: the other hand, uh, you know, sometimes we're we're extra
Speaker 1: on guard against violators of those social norms, so it
Speaker 1: can create very weird and uneven energy. Yeah, the idea
Speaker 1: of accidentally cutting in line is just horrifying to me,
Speaker 1: Like the idea that I might do that is enough
Speaker 1: to to cause that panic, like I'm about to you know,
Speaker 1: go on stage and speak in public or something that
Speaker 1: level of of apprehension. And I think we saw probably
Speaker 1: a lot of this during the pandemic because a lot
Speaker 1: of places that depended more on interior spaces had to
Speaker 1: suddenly depend on exterior spaces, which means lines that might
Speaker 1: be better managed in an entirely indoors or in partially
Speaker 1: partially indoors environment were suddenly left to exist entirely outside
Speaker 1: the establishment. And I've seen cases of this where like,
Speaker 1: clearly this was not what was intended. So the the
Speaker 1: resulting line situation is maybe more confusing or counterintuitive, and
Speaker 1: people fall you know, show up and fall into it
Speaker 1: and and maybe like miss where they're supposed to stand,
Speaker 1: creates confusion, creates more opportunity for misunderstandings. So what we're
Speaker 1: observing is that at least among lots of people, there
Speaker 1: is a deep, powerful commitment to upholding the norms of
Speaker 1: the single file, first come, first serve line for all
Speaker 1: different kinds of UH services and access to things. And
Speaker 1: when you observe this level of commitment to a norm,
Speaker 1: I think it's very easy to assume that maybe lining
Speaker 1: up single file for your turn at something is a deep,
Speaker 1: almost biologically mandated behavior that goes back as far as
Speaker 1: recorded history and as universal across cultures. But you should
Speaker 1: always be cautious about drawing conclusions like that, because it
Speaker 1: turns out, in the case of the single file, first come,
Speaker 1: first serve line, this is absolutely not the case. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of fascinating features of of waiting in line,
Speaker 1: or queueing as it's more often referred to in the
Speaker 1: scientific literature UH, and we'll get into more of those
Speaker 1: as as we discussed this topic for the next couple
Speaker 1: of episodes. But one of the fascinating things is that
Speaker 1: queuing is to a large extent, historically and culturally contingent.
Speaker 1: Not everybody gets in line for things, and even in
Speaker 1: cultures where we do we haven't always done it that way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Queuing is it's it's a pretty interesting phenomenon because on
Speaker 1: one level, we often see this behavior as a means
Speaker 1: of self organizing, sometimes via non human directions such as
Speaker 1: signs or ropes. There's not you know, there's not a
Speaker 1: person there to yell at you if you get out
Speaker 1: of line. Other times there is a person there to
Speaker 1: yell at you, um, and such as with say T
Speaker 1: s A. Agents who you know they're doing an important job,
Speaker 1: but a lot of times they're not shy about raising
Speaker 1: their voice. Uh. And other times it's just out of
Speaker 1: necessity in cases where there are no rules, but there
Speaker 1: is a social pressure to form a queue of some sort,
Speaker 1: you know, where people realize like there's no there's nothing
Speaker 1: to indicate how we should line up in order to
Speaker 1: to enter an establishment or get up to the register,
Speaker 1: So people just figure it out on their own, sometimes poorly,
Speaker 1: sometimes with like the line going completely across the sidewalk
Speaker 1: so that people can't cut through. Things like that, And
Speaker 1: then oftentimes you see someone having to come out and say,
Speaker 1: let's actually make the line go against the side of
Speaker 1: the building, et cetera. Yeah, but I think one thing
Speaker 1: that's pretty amazing about lines is that if you're in,
Speaker 1: if you're in culturated in lines, if queuing is a
Speaker 1: part of your culture and your upbringing, it's amazing how
Speaker 1: regularly people spontaneously organized into lines and how little problem
Speaker 1: they have with it overall. Yeah, I mean, and ultimately
Speaker 1: comes down to a basic reality. Some come first by
Speaker 1: necessity in order to assure everyone proceeds, and a lot
Speaker 1: of times that is a first come, first serve situation.
Speaker 1: Whoever is first gets to stand in line first. Um,
Speaker 1: and it just avoids chaos, right Yeah. But of course,
Speaker 1: while queuing can seem very fair and democratic, though though
Speaker 1: in the in the UK it was, it was even
Speaker 1: accused of it was accused of being a product of socialism.
Speaker 1: I found an interesting paper about that. Maybe we'll get
Speaker 1: into that more later. Um, we have no shortage of
Speaker 1: ways to make queuing less of an even a fair
Speaker 1: Various rules always seem to exist to allow people to legally,
Speaker 1: you know, within the social contract, to legally break line,
Speaker 1: to form separate lines, faster lines, etcetera. So it can
Speaker 1: often depend on where you are in the line and
Speaker 1: who you were and who you are in the line,
Speaker 1: what you're waiting for, etcetera. Uh. To determine exactly how
Speaker 1: fair this whole system seems, though, I find something that's
Speaker 1: interesting is that if there are standing line breaking mechanics
Speaker 1: in place, uh, those mechanics are often hidden from view
Speaker 1: in one way or another. Like the institution that has
Speaker 1: the line that that allows some kind of organized line
Speaker 1: breaking for preferred waiters. Uh, Like they try to keep
Speaker 1: it sort of separate so people don't see somebody just
Speaker 1: cutting straight in front of everybody else. But but not
Speaker 1: at the airport, um, you know, because it's basically like,
Speaker 1: all right, do we have any babies, Okay, let's get
Speaker 1: some babies on board. Okay, how about old people, soldiers? Okay,
Speaker 1: rich people? Do you have any rich people in the group?
Speaker 1: You know? It's it's it. It's not how they do it, obviously,
Speaker 1: but but sometimes they can smack of that, especially if
Speaker 1: you were in like loading group, you know, thirteen or whatever. Um,
Speaker 1: I guess there's no way to hide it. If it's
Speaker 1: an airplane, there's just this one access point. Everybody's waiting
Speaker 1: in the same place. But when it's possible, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of places really do like to keep it
Speaker 1: keep it sort of out of you in some way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I will say at airports I've been to, they'll often
Speaker 1: have to have it set up. So the t S
Speaker 1: A pre check line, uh is is maybe it's maybe
Speaker 1: like a little less obvious, but at the same time,
Speaker 1: like something like the t S A pre check line
Speaker 1: is something they want, well, they want participants to take
Speaker 1: advantage off. So you don't want to ride it completely.
Speaker 1: Uh So I kind of like with your fast pass
Speaker 1: at an amusement park. You don't want it to make
Speaker 1: you don't want to make everyone miserable, but you do
Speaker 1: want to sell fast passes. Um So, I guess you
Speaker 1: don't want to sell exclusively fast passes. So, but I
Speaker 1: imagine that's worked out in the uh in the price
Speaker 1: gauge and all. Have you ever read the stuff about
Speaker 1: the the alleged I mean, I I don't know this
Speaker 1: is true for sure, but it is at least alleged
Speaker 1: that some amusement parks think of wait times not just
Speaker 1: as something that's necessary, you know, because everybody can't ride
Speaker 1: the roller coaster at the same time, but also as
Speaker 1: something that extends the perceived value of what there is
Speaker 1: to do at the amusement park because if you could
Speaker 1: just ride every roller coaster in order, you know what,
Speaker 1: You've got like an hour of fun there, and then
Speaker 1: then there's nothing else to do. You've already done everything.
Speaker 1: So by having people wait in line for things, that's
Speaker 1: not only a necessity, it also allows you to stretch
Speaker 1: out the perception of having fun over the course of
Speaker 1: an entire day. So people are like, Wow, I got
Speaker 1: to do this all day. It was really great. Huh yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Um. I mean the thing about amusement
Speaker 1: from for my money, I don't want to go from
Speaker 1: roller coaster to roller coaster because that will make me sick.
Speaker 1: I need some time to settle down. I also kind
Speaker 1: of like a certain amount of anticipation building up to
Speaker 1: the ride, and some rides you're nicer. Amusement parks tend
Speaker 1: to do a really good job of making your your
Speaker 1: way more pleasant, uh you know, or or out there.
Speaker 1: Another specific example I'll point out is the nether World
Speaker 1: Haunted attraction here in the Atlanta area. Uh. Often you'll
Speaker 1: be a long line, there'll be some sort of fast
Speaker 1: PAS scenario, but you'll end up going through a museum
Speaker 1: of the haunted attraction as part of the line waiting experience,
Speaker 1: which is that kind of thing I really appreciate, um,
Speaker 1: you know, where it makes the line a little more
Speaker 1: part of the experience and not just this dull thing
Speaker 1: you're doing in order to have the experience. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: have not been to a lot of amusement parks. Uh,
Speaker 1: maybe not any as an adult that I can remember.
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe maybe I'll think of an exception,
Speaker 1: but I remember as a child going like Universal Studios, Florida,
Speaker 1: and one thing that that they did something like that,
Speaker 1: They're We're saying, you're waiting in line for the Jaws ride,
Speaker 1: and they've got a kind of backstory for you. So
Speaker 1: they've got TVs playing things that set up the ride.
Speaker 1: And I think something similar was true of like the
Speaker 1: Back to the Future ride, Like the ride has a
Speaker 1: back story and as you're going through the line, you're
Speaker 1: watching TV stations playing various segments of the back story. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: it's interesting with both the Haunted attraction and the amusement
Speaker 1: park ride. Essentially these are examples of especially with the
Speaker 1: Hunted attraction, you're standing in line to walk through in
Speaker 1: a line, and in the case of the ride, you're
Speaker 1: standing in line to go in a circle and then
Speaker 1: leave and continue your line out of the the exhibit.
Speaker 1: But a lot of times we're talking about standing in
Speaker 1: line for resources. Uh. And and this this got me thinking.
Speaker 1: I was looking around a little bit of the animal world,
Speaker 1: and you'll you'll often read something about something like queuing
Speaker 1: in terms of dominance among social animals. For instance, I
Speaker 1: was reading to account about how some baboons, Uh, there's
Speaker 1: something with some with baboons, there's something like queuing that
Speaker 1: has arrived at after food is discovered, and it's something
Speaker 1: that's governed by the dominant primate in the group. So
Speaker 1: it's not a very fair system of queuing by most
Speaker 1: human standards, but it is a system and it prevents
Speaker 1: the need for overt conflict and strug goal amid these individuals. Right.
Speaker 1: So it's important to make a distinction because anytime you
Speaker 1: have multiple people trying to get access to the same
Speaker 1: thing and they can't all access that at the same time,
Speaker 1: you've got to have some system for ordering access. But
Speaker 1: what we're talking about when we say waiting in line
Speaker 1: is almost always understood to mean the relatively egalitarian, first come,
Speaker 1: first serve, single file line, which is very which is
Speaker 1: very different than what the baboons are doing. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: oh man, we haven't even got into the spacing of lines,
Speaker 1: which of course has become certainly more of a thing
Speaker 1: during pandemic times. Uh, sometimes obeyed as part of the
Speaker 1: social norm, sometimes disturbingly ignored. Uh. But prior to the
Speaker 1: pandemic you at least saw it with A T M
Speaker 1: S where there was this kind of agreed upon social
Speaker 1: contract that if you were waiting in line behind me
Speaker 1: at the A t M and I'm at the A
Speaker 1: t M, you will like stand back a certain amount
Speaker 1: us it would be impolite, if not threatening, to stand
Speaker 1: too close to me during this transaction. What's that line
Speaker 1: from the SNL song The Creep? I think it's something
Speaker 1: like when you want to make a friend at the
Speaker 1: A T M do the creep? Oh yeah, where they're
Speaker 1: all dressed like John Waters, and I believe John Waters
Speaker 1: makes an appearance in that. Yeah, But the point being
Speaker 1: you don't approach people too closely at the A t M. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: Now this is kind of a stretch, but I admit,
Speaker 1: but this got me thinking about another key example of
Speaker 1: line formation among humans, not the vertical lines of cues
Speaker 1: or people following a path, but the horizontal lines of
Speaker 1: rank and file armed combatants. Uh, the sort of ordered
Speaker 1: approach to the movement and action of human beings that
Speaker 1: has been vitally important in the history of warfare, because
Speaker 1: on one level, it's entirely unlike forming a line to
Speaker 1: use an a t M or to get buy a
Speaker 1: hot dog, et cetera. But there is also a sense
Speaker 1: of it there as well. I think if you, you know,
Speaker 1: if you sort of open your mind and compare the
Speaker 1: two where a discipline system is in place to ensure
Speaker 1: peak performance of the group, benefiting the whole group but
Speaker 1: also the individuals within the group. You know what I'm say, Oh,
Speaker 1: I see that comparison. Did you bring this up because
Speaker 1: you've been reading that blog about military history and analyzing
Speaker 1: Tolkien that you sent me? Yes, it is no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that that's really good because one of the things you
Speaker 1: sent me was an article or at least a quote
Speaker 1: about how the thing you see with medieval style or
Speaker 1: ancient style battles in movies where it's just an all
Speaker 1: out melee, you know, free for all, or everybody's just
Speaker 1: fighting random combatants in whatever order it seems to occur
Speaker 1: to them that this is not at least how battles
Speaker 1: were supposed to go in in ancient combat, where you'd
Speaker 1: be using spears or swords handheld weapons. I mean that
Speaker 1: in most cases you want to be fighting in formation
Speaker 1: or you're losing. Yeah. That that blog is a collection
Speaker 1: of unmitigated pedantry by military historian Bret C. Devereaux. And yeah,
Speaker 1: he makes the point where if if it's broken out
Speaker 1: into just chaotic melee, uh, that means the battle has
Speaker 1: already gone poorly. And if if you're if you're you know,
Speaker 1: you may have already lost at that point, you probably
Speaker 1: have already lost. But if you if you're gonna win,
Speaker 1: then you haven't broke rank. Like the winners don't break rank,
Speaker 1: they stick together and stay in formation. And I think
Speaker 1: the same is true of standing in line. Like if
Speaker 1: people start breaking rank, if people start panicking, then then
Speaker 1: it's all over. Like nobody gets to use the A T.
Speaker 1: M machine if this order breaks down, nobody gets to
Speaker 1: buy a hot dog or a cup of coffee, nobody
Speaker 1: gets to board the plane. Yeah, of course, so nobody
Speaker 1: enjoys waiting in line. But you've got to acknowledge that
Speaker 1: waiting in a first come, first serve line for the
Speaker 1: A t M is much better than using the shoving
Speaker 1: to the front method. Yeah, I guess unless you're really
Speaker 1: good at shoving. But to be serious for a minute,
Speaker 1: if you already use the shoving to the front method
Speaker 1: and you do actually get to the A t M,
Speaker 1: what happens to you once you get your cash? I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a recurring problem. I think if you don't
Speaker 1: have a well organized system for for getting people access
Speaker 1: to service points. Yeah, if you totally dismantle the social
Speaker 1: norms leading up to the A t M, then what
Speaker 1: about the rest of the social norms surrounding the whole experience?
Speaker 1: Though I do want to say that this doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean that the the single file, first come, first serve
Speaker 1: line is the only way to organize access to things.
Speaker 1: There are other ways that people have come up with
Speaker 1: sort of social rules for organizing access. This is just
Speaker 1: a very common one in the modern world, in the
Speaker 1: Western world, especially thank thank thank Now. I was wondering
Speaker 1: about a question which was how much of our lives
Speaker 1: do we on average spend waiting in line? And I
Speaker 1: had some trouble finding a really solid, well reasoned answer
Speaker 1: to this. But there is one thing, at least the
Speaker 1: closest thing I've come across, which I found in an
Speaker 1: article by Anna Swanson called what really drives you crazy
Speaker 1: about waiting in line? It actually isn't the weight at all.
Speaker 1: This was published in the Washington Post, and for this article,
Speaker 1: Swanson interviews Richard Larson, who is a professor who studies
Speaker 1: queuing theory at m i T. That's actually an area
Speaker 1: of study. Now, it's a little bit broader than just
Speaker 1: people standing in per person on their feet in a
Speaker 1: single file line. It's more about like about like ordering
Speaker 1: access to things, and they're all kinds of mathematical theories
Speaker 1: about how to maximize efficiency in systems that use various
Speaker 1: forms of queueing and so forth, and so Larsen studies
Speaker 1: that type of thing. But Larson estimates that quote altogether
Speaker 1: some people spend a year or two of their lives
Speaker 1: waiting in line. Now, a big note here is that
Speaker 1: the some people is about the best you can do there,
Speaker 1: because the amount of time people spend waiting in line
Speaker 1: will have enormous variants depending on what culture you live in,
Speaker 1: what kind of business you do, whether you live in
Speaker 1: a city or in the country, etcetera. But for this
Speaker 1: common guess of one to two years, how would you
Speaker 1: arrive at that? Well, Larson's research makes him think that
Speaker 1: for many Americans at least the majority of their Q
Speaker 1: time is actually spent waiting in traffic congestion, which is
Speaker 1: interesting because I wouldn't have thought about traffic as a
Speaker 1: form of waiting in line. But I guess by almost
Speaker 1: every way of defining it, really it is. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: we may not think about it as much, but we are,
Speaker 1: you know, proceeding in lines. And granted there are varied lines,
Speaker 1: there's a certain amount of cutting in line that is,
Speaker 1: that is very much part of the legal process. Though
Speaker 1: you do see breakdowns in this where it becomes super obvious,
Speaker 1: you know, where like say, situations where a lane is
Speaker 1: closed ahead and everyone needs to merge to the right,
Speaker 1: and you'll have some people that are like, Nope, I'm
Speaker 1: going to go as far in the left lane as possible,
Speaker 1: and then I shall insist on being let into the
Speaker 1: appropriate lane. Stuff like that. That'll, at least I know
Speaker 1: it in me, it'll raise the accusation of of line cutter.
Speaker 1: You know, I'll be you know, I won't actually shake
Speaker 1: my fist or anything. But I'm inside, are we thinking
Speaker 1: that person? They are no good? They are they are
Speaker 1: breaking the rules here. So in practice I hate it too,
Speaker 1: But I have a terrible piece of wisdom on the
Speaker 1: subject that I'm sure we'll cause your polite and orderly
Speaker 1: mind to revolt, but I have to share it. So
Speaker 1: among experts who study traffic queuing, the late merge is
Speaker 1: widely considered to be superior to the early merge. Basically,
Speaker 1: the thinking is that, if say a two lane highway
Speaker 1: is narrowing down to one lane for construction, drivers should
Speaker 1: use all the lanes available to them for as long
Speaker 1: as they can, and then take turns one by one,
Speaker 1: merging into the bottle neck. Now, this doesn't necessarily move
Speaker 1: the cars through any faster than an early merge system,
Speaker 1: but it's still is more efficient because it reduces the
Speaker 1: backward stretching length of the traffic jam, though I did
Speaker 1: find at least one case where it was found to
Speaker 1: speed up the traffic moving through the bottle neck. There
Speaker 1: was a New York Times article from October by Christopher
Speaker 1: Melee about late merging, and it's cited a study from
Speaker 1: the Colorado Department of Transportation that found late merging and
Speaker 1: work zones led to a fifteen percent increase in the
Speaker 1: volume of cars passing through, and that it cut the
Speaker 1: length of the backup on the road in half. But
Speaker 1: either way, it's also considered superior because it's safer since
Speaker 1: the merging one at a time in the zipper like
Speaker 1: fashion tends to happen at a predictable way at lower
Speaker 1: speeds than early merging does. So so I hate it too.
Speaker 1: And when I see somebody running down the open lane
Speaker 1: and merging late, it looks selfish. If you do it,
Speaker 1: it feels selfish when you see it. I'm like, you jerk.
Speaker 1: But but it's probably, unfortunately, what everybody should be doing
Speaker 1: for the greater good. Well, I have a hard time
Speaker 1: imagining that the person that the people that I often
Speaker 1: see doing this are doing it because they're they're well
Speaker 1: acquainted with queuing theory, and then they're like, I'm doing
Speaker 1: the responsible thing. Don't look at me, weird, you know.
Speaker 1: I imagine they're they're also being aggressive in other aspects
Speaker 1: of their driving experience, right, But then again, queuing theory
Speaker 1: professors they have to drive to So perhaps the last
Speaker 1: person that I judge how actually was Richard Larson. I
Speaker 1: don't know that's quite possible. Were you in Massachusetts at
Speaker 1: the time, No, but you know, maybe maybe he was
Speaker 1: going to Florida. I don't know, yeah, but anyway, So
Speaker 1: the the idea is that the majority of time that
Speaker 1: people spend waiting in line, on average, Again, there's gonna
Speaker 1: be huge variants from person to person, but on average
Speaker 1: is probably waiting in traffic congestion, which is in a
Speaker 1: way waiting in line because you are queued up for
Speaker 1: access to something. In this case, what you're usually queued
Speaker 1: up for access to is a a bottleneck in the
Speaker 1: throughput of the traffic on the street. So how do
Speaker 1: you get to the one to two years number? Well, uh,
Speaker 1: Larson explains as follows. Suppose that a home to work
Speaker 1: trip on a Sunday morning takes you thirty minutes, but
Speaker 1: on a working weekday it takes you sixty minutes. That
Speaker 1: corresponds to thirty minutes each day each way of traffic
Speaker 1: caused queuing, sixty minutes of traffic queuing each day, or
Speaker 1: three minutes each week. If you make reasonable assumptions, about
Speaker 1: five day is a week of driving like this both
Speaker 1: ways for an entire career. Then one comes up with
Speaker 1: figures of one to two years of your waking life
Speaker 1: spent in queues, mostly rush hour traffic cues and slowness,
Speaker 1: which is equivalent to queuing. So that's very back of
Speaker 1: the envelope, and that's just traffic, but it does make
Speaker 1: you realize how much of modern American life is going
Speaker 1: to be characterized by simply waiting for access to things. Uh. Though,
Speaker 1: It's also interesting to me because I was thinking, well,
Speaker 1: some people might quibble with whether traffic actually counts as
Speaker 1: queuing or not, and and that raised the question why
Speaker 1: it's sort of in itself interesting, Why would people not
Speaker 1: think of traffic as a form of waiting in line?
Speaker 1: I would say it is. It's definitely waiting in line.
Speaker 1: It's even more dangerous waiting in line because you're in
Speaker 1: a large vehicle that can cause fatalities. You are you
Speaker 1: are also, I mean, without even getting into the whole
Speaker 1: issue of road rage, you're in a You're in an
Speaker 1: area where we see the social norms sometimes take on
Speaker 1: different forms, and it becomes it can become more difficult
Speaker 1: to associate those other cars with individual people in ways
Speaker 1: that you don't see in an actual in person line. Um,
Speaker 1: I guess on one level, I'm tempted to say, well,
Speaker 1: if you're in your car, at least you can listen
Speaker 1: to a podcast. But of course with mobile technology you
Speaker 1: can you can if you if you think to bring
Speaker 1: your headphones, you can do so in a in an
Speaker 1: actual in person line as well. So I don't know sure. Okay,
Speaker 1: here's another queuing theory question that that I've wondered about.
Speaker 1: Let's say you're waiting in line for a number of
Speaker 1: service points, maybe three bank tellers. There are a couple
Speaker 1: of different ways that the bank can organize the waiting process.
Speaker 1: Uh So, for example, they can have individual lines for
Speaker 1: each bank teller and you just pick which line to
Speaker 1: get in, or there can be one single snaking line
Speaker 1: and once you get to the front of it, you
Speaker 1: go to the next available teller. I was wondering, is
Speaker 1: it actually is one of these actually more efficient than
Speaker 1: the other, or are they about the same? Well, it
Speaker 1: turns out there's an answer to that, and it's sort
Speaker 1: of what you would guess if you think about it.
Speaker 1: This also was by way of Richard Larson in that
Speaker 1: same Washington Post article on average weight times for the
Speaker 1: two systems are about the same, so you know, you
Speaker 1: average it out over a lifetime, it's not going to
Speaker 1: make a major difference. But there is much more variance
Speaker 1: for weight times in the multi line system, so there
Speaker 1: is a greater chance that you get through either very
Speaker 1: quickly or you get stuck for a long time. So
Speaker 1: I think the individual line system can be thought of
Speaker 1: more as the gamblers system. Right when you want to
Speaker 1: roll the dice on your weight time, that's the better
Speaker 1: way to go. But if you want to have a
Speaker 1: more predictable experience, the serpentine line is better. So of
Speaker 1: course the having multi the multi line system is going
Speaker 1: to be the one where you inevitably end up saying
Speaker 1: to yourself, oh I picked the wrong line, or perhaps
Speaker 1: you say, oh I picked the correct line. But um
Speaker 1: so I guess the experience is going to be a
Speaker 1: little more different. Is there gonna be a little different
Speaker 1: depending on it Now, of course, it's not actually possible
Speaker 1: that that it would really be the case over the
Speaker 1: course of a life that the other line always moves faster.
Speaker 1: So the fact that the other line always moves faster
Speaker 1: really tells us something about human psychology, right that we
Speaker 1: tend to notice more when things are not going our way. Now.
Speaker 1: The many short lines approach, of course, also lends itself
Speaker 1: to tiered systems stuff like t s, a pre check
Speaker 1: or speed pass an amusement park. Uh. And depending on
Speaker 1: how this is arranged, it might make for increased deficiency
Speaker 1: uh and or gives some individuals or groups an unfair advantage.
Speaker 1: Or maybe it's a fair advantage. It really depends on
Speaker 1: your vantage point on these particular incidents. Uh Huh. I
Speaker 1: wanted to go to an historical example on this. I
Speaker 1: was looking around and I was thinking, well, you know, queuing.
Speaker 1: You know, given that this is something that people have
Speaker 1: had to do for a long time, like, but you
Speaker 1: do see some cultural differences. What's a what's a nice
Speaker 1: like ancient example of queuing? And I found a pretty
Speaker 1: good one. I think it's um, it's from the ancient world,
Speaker 1: and it requires to visit, uh, the Oracle of Delphie.
Speaker 1: Now we've we've I don't think we've ever really talked
Speaker 1: about Delphi in depth on the show before. I think
Speaker 1: it came up briefly in our Bicameral Mind episode. But
Speaker 1: we could totally do a whole series on it because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of interesting angles. You know, you have
Speaker 1: mythology history. There's also there's a whole chemical discussion to
Speaker 1: be had as well. Oh yeah, about what like huffing
Speaker 1: volcanic gases possibly or something. Yeah, but he But here's
Speaker 1: the basics. The ancient Greeks considered Delphi to be the
Speaker 1: center of the world, and it's here that the the
Speaker 1: Omphallus of Delphi mentioned in our previous Listener Male episode.
Speaker 1: This is where you would find this artifact. There's is
Speaker 1: supposed to be the stone um of the god Yes,
Speaker 1: I believe, fed to chron Us in in lieu of
Speaker 1: his own son Zeus, so that Zeus could could live
Speaker 1: instead of being munched. Yeah. So this artifact found its
Speaker 1: home there and it served as kind of the navel
Speaker 1: of the world. But it was also the location of
Speaker 1: this vital temple of Delphi where one might consult an
Speaker 1: oracle about the future or the past. Uh. Now oracle
Speaker 1: would be someone known as the Pythia, and this would
Speaker 1: be a female conduit for the god Apollo. Uh, someone
Speaker 1: serving as the oracle, and you would see people arrive
Speaker 1: here from all over the essentially the known world, in
Speaker 1: the regions surrounding Greece. Uh, they would pursue matters of
Speaker 1: love state craft. You would have ambassadors showing up to
Speaker 1: see to determine, like what course of action should be
Speaker 1: taken at a at a state level or you know
Speaker 1: what accounts for state level at the time. Businesses. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, if you have business inquiries, you might go
Speaker 1: So a lot of people were coming in. You need
Speaker 1: to find out if your son is going to depose
Speaker 1: and kill you. Yeah, yeah, that sort of thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there are various origin stories concerning the oracle here,
Speaker 1: but the one which was given in the first century
Speaker 1: BC by the writer uh Diodorus, was that a goat
Speaker 1: discovered a cave and the fumes from the cave caused
Speaker 1: him to become untethered from the now and to experience
Speaker 1: both the future and the past, thus the establishment of
Speaker 1: a temple and uh, you know, and arranging a particular
Speaker 1: individual to to serve as the oracle, and providing an
Speaker 1: orderly means for people to seek these sacred divinations. Okay,
Speaker 1: So it seems like what you've got here is a
Speaker 1: service that a lot of people are going to want
Speaker 1: and they can't all get at the same time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so you've got to manage that, so yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of people coming in. It becomes a major center
Speaker 1: of banking and commerce. And I found a really interesting
Speaker 1: book by an author by the by the name of
Speaker 1: Michael Scott titled Delphi, a History of the Center of
Speaker 1: the Ancient World published and as Scott explains, they turned
Speaker 1: to a system of queuing. So I want to read
Speaker 1: a quote from this book. Quote. The consultants, who would
Speaker 1: have had to arrive, probably some days before the appointed
Speaker 1: consultation day, would now play their part. They first had
Speaker 1: to purify themselves with water from the springs of Delphi. Next,
Speaker 1: they had to organize according to the strict rules governing
Speaker 1: the order of consultation. Local Delphians always had the first
Speaker 1: right of audience. What followed them was a system of
Speaker 1: queuing that prioritize first Greeks whose city or tribe was
Speaker 1: part of Delphi's supreme governing Council, then all other Greeks,
Speaker 1: and finally non Greeks. But within each section there was
Speaker 1: also a way to skip to the front, a system
Speaker 1: known as promanteau promantea. The right to consult the oracle
Speaker 1: before others could be awarded to individuals or cities by
Speaker 1: the city of Delphi as an expression of the closer
Speaker 1: relationship between them, or as thanks for particular actions as
Speaker 1: oracle pre check exactly. Yeah, and so your city might
Speaker 1: be awarded promantia, for instance, for paying for a new
Speaker 1: altar or something to that effect. But but it's interesting.
Speaker 1: It is kind of like a speed pass or one
Speaker 1: of those. If you ever go to a place where
Speaker 1: they have special parking places for the donors that that
Speaker 1: helped fund a like a I don't know, performing arts
Speaker 1: center or botanical garden, that's sort of things kind of
Speaker 1: like that. But it also shows that for a very
Speaker 1: long time, human civilization has had to work out how
Speaker 1: to manage people as they move to and through various systems,
Speaker 1: especially if it's something like this where there's there's only
Speaker 1: the one oracle, like they can't see everybody at once.
Speaker 1: You need a system in place and um and it.
Speaker 1: But it's ultimately going to be more complicated than just
Speaker 1: a first come, first serve, that's right. And this brings
Speaker 1: us back to the idea that while the the single file,
Speaker 1: first come, first serve line might feel like it, you know,
Speaker 1: it might feel to us like it is so deep
Speaker 1: and so obvious that's just a part of our biology.
Speaker 1: Once again, it's something that is somewhat culturally and historically contingent,
Speaker 1: and it's it's not something that was all that's always
Speaker 1: in place everywhere in history. I was reading some articles
Speaker 1: trying to find like where this convention really got popular,
Speaker 1: and one thing I found was a number of articles
Speaker 1: about a book by an author named David Andrews called
Speaker 1: Why Does the Other Line Always Move Faster? That seems
Speaker 1: like kind of a pop history of queuing. And Andrew's
Speaker 1: argues at least that the first come, first serve, single
Speaker 1: file queuing us system is mostly a recent phenomenon and
Speaker 1: that it actually has its origins in the French Revolution. Uh.
Speaker 1: He deduces this in part from the nineteenth century Scottish
Speaker 1: historian and S. A. S. Thomas Carlyle, who wrote extensively
Speaker 1: about the French Revolution in a three volume chronicle that
Speaker 1: was first published in eighteen thirty seven. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that Carlisle observed about post revolutionary France was
Speaker 1: the change in modes of customer service. He said that
Speaker 1: in their bakeries in Paris, customers would line up in
Speaker 1: single file for service in what we're called queues q
Speaker 1: meant tale in Old French, a tale like an animal's tale,
Speaker 1: originally coming from the Latin coda or cauta, and quoted
Speaker 1: in an ap article I was reading about this book, uh,
Speaker 1: that there were basically political connotations to the idea of
Speaker 1: waiting in queue for service. That it was supposed to
Speaker 1: be a demonstration of commitment to the values of the
Speaker 1: French revolutions logan of liberty, equality and fraternity. It meant
Speaker 1: patiently waiting on your turn, you know, no matter what
Speaker 1: your job was or your station. Uh. And and Carlisle
Speaker 1: summed it up in the sentence, patriotism stands in Q. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is interesting how there are different ways
Speaker 1: of looking at the line and the sort of the
Speaker 1: democratic nature of the line, because again you'll also see
Speaker 1: accusations of the line as a as a manifestation of socialism.
Speaker 1: You'll see it critiqued. Uh. This was a common critique
Speaker 1: of of the Soviet Union back that you're talking about
Speaker 1: the bread lines and having to wait in line for bread. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, as if it were you know, it's a
Speaker 1: sign of something not working within the institution. Well, I
Speaker 1: think the problem there, like to the extent that that
Speaker 1: is a problem. The problem there is scarcity, not the
Speaker 1: fact that it's a first come, first serve system for access,
Speaker 1: but like the line became emblematic of the scarcity, right,
Speaker 1: And this actually leads, I think into a that's an
Speaker 1: excellent lead into our discussion of queuing psychology, because yeah,
Speaker 1: how do you perceive the line before you were in it?
Speaker 1: How do you perceive the line once you are in it?
Speaker 1: Because let's say you're you know, you're you're you're out
Speaker 1: and about and you're like, oh, I think I'm going
Speaker 1: to drop in at this coffee place. I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: a cup of coffee. And as you approach, you see
Speaker 1: that there is a long line or you know, a
Speaker 1: longish line anyway to acquire said coffee. So how are
Speaker 1: you supposed to view that? You could view it like saying,
Speaker 1: oh good, they have a system. They have a system
Speaker 1: for me to get coffee. I can go get in
Speaker 1: line and I can totally acquire it. You know, maybe
Speaker 1: it looks like the lines moving, or you might say,
Speaker 1: oh man, there's a line. Maybe they're running out of coffee.
Speaker 1: Maybe this is a scarity scarcity situation, or perhaps you're
Speaker 1: concerned maybe they're understaffed, maybe they can't properly attend to
Speaker 1: everybody who wants coffee today. You know. There there's so
Speaker 1: many different ways of viewing it and um and certainly
Speaker 1: when you start looking at the like the marketing research
Speaker 1: on it, it is readily identified that there there's an
Speaker 1: economic cost and a psychological cost to standing in line,
Speaker 1: you know, because everybody in line that's waiting is somebody
Speaker 1: that you you you generally have not yet um tended
Speaker 1: to uh. You know. Granted you can have multiple line
Speaker 1: system like the line to UM to to order and
Speaker 1: then the line to get your food, etcetera. UM, but
Speaker 1: there's a potential economic cost associated with that line, and
Speaker 1: then there's a psychological cost. What is that individual doing
Speaker 1: while they were waiting in line? Are they frustrated? Are
Speaker 1: they are they angry? Are they at pulling out their
Speaker 1: phones and going to one of the review sites so
Speaker 1: they can you know, leave a nasty review because they
Speaker 1: haven't received their coffee yet. Yeah, exactly. So a ton
Speaker 1: of the psychological research about queuing has actually been done
Speaker 1: in the context, like you say, of like marketing and
Speaker 1: consumer behavior research and in the business world. But even
Speaker 1: in that context, there's a lot of really interesting stuff
Speaker 1: that's been found. Some of it, I think we'll ring
Speaker 1: true to your experiences. Some of it might be more surprising.
Speaker 1: One of the things that really rings true to my
Speaker 1: experience is that people experience weights as longer and is
Speaker 1: less pleasant when they don't know how long the weight
Speaker 1: is going to be and they don't understand the reason
Speaker 1: for the way that. That's like the real that's the
Speaker 1: red zone. That's really bad. Yeah, I have to admit
Speaker 1: the place that I got coffee this morning, though though
Speaker 1: I love it it's a great place, is a similar
Speaker 1: situation because there was no visible line to order, but
Speaker 1: it was just a lot of people waiting on their
Speaker 1: order outside and so a lot of the time. And
Speaker 1: of course I went into it having read some of
Speaker 1: these studies, so I was thinking a lot about our
Speaker 1: recording today, um and maybe had a little extra AMMO
Speaker 1: to to consider whilst waiting. But yeah, your mind starts wondering, Okay,
Speaker 1: I wonder what's going on here? Man? Are they understaffed?
Speaker 1: And you start looking at other people to see if
Speaker 1: they're frustrated, and see how everyone is and and all.
Speaker 1: Then you get suddenly in my case too I found
Speaker 1: myself worrying, Oh man, I think I'm about to get
Speaker 1: my coffee before these people who are here when I
Speaker 1: got here? Is that going to feel weird? Because then
Speaker 1: I'm sort of cutting in line. I mean not in
Speaker 1: a way it where I bear the blame, but in
Speaker 1: a way that could still be socially awkward. You know.
Speaker 1: Oh well, this actually ties into one of the studies
Speaker 1: I wanted to mention today. Do you mind if I
Speaker 1: cut right to this one real quick? You're gonna kind
Speaker 1: of ahead of me and the outline for this episode.
Speaker 1: I want to cut in line on the outline just
Speaker 1: because it ties into what you just said. Well, this
Speaker 1: is going to be very brief. But one of the
Speaker 1: questions I was wondering about is okay, so you just
Speaker 1: assume you know what fairness in queuing is, right, because
Speaker 1: when you see somebody like cutting in line, that is
Speaker 1: obviously a violation of the fairness principle that you've got
Speaker 1: in mind when you're when you're queuing up for something.
Speaker 1: But there are other principles at work as well, And
Speaker 1: so there was a study I was looking at by
Speaker 1: Wrong Wrong Show and Deleep Soman in psychology and marketing,
Speaker 1: in two thousand eight called consumers waiting in queues the
Speaker 1: role of first order and second order justice. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so this looks at actually two different senses of justice
Speaker 1: about waiting in line. One is the sution is the
Speaker 1: line being served according to a first in, first out principle,
Speaker 1: I you know, in order, no cutting in line. And
Speaker 1: the second principle is are people in line all waiting
Speaker 1: approximately equal amounts of time? These two things are actually
Speaker 1: not always coterminous, and sometimes they go against one another.
Speaker 1: For example, if you're at a grocery store and somebody
Speaker 1: has a you know, huge cart full of tiny items,
Speaker 1: they're buying the entire spice rack off the shelf or something,
Speaker 1: and they want to pay by check and they get
Speaker 1: in front of you in line, you might have to
Speaker 1: wait way more than the average customer. So that's one
Speaker 1: type of unfairness you could perceive. But then, of course
Speaker 1: the other thing would be, well, what if the store
Speaker 1: just said like, well, why don't you come in front
Speaker 1: of this person right? Uh, you know, even though they
Speaker 1: got there before you. And so the authors looked into
Speaker 1: the question here, do do customers care about both of
Speaker 1: these things? They found that yes, people actually do care
Speaker 1: about both of these types of fairness. But they also
Speaker 1: found that customers care about adherence to the first in,
Speaker 1: first out principle more than they care about the equal
Speaker 1: waiting time principle. Ah So an individual with a large cart,
Speaker 1: they're likely to take more offense that at the the
Speaker 1: the person of the cash registers saying can we let
Speaker 1: that person with one item go ahead of you? Um.
Speaker 1: Whereas if it's a situation where you're approaching in your
Speaker 1: large cart and they say, actually, the person who was
Speaker 1: ahead of you had to go back and get an item,
Speaker 1: but now they're back, can they go ahead in front
Speaker 1: of you? Then that you would you would probably be
Speaker 1: more okay with that because they were still ahead of
Speaker 1: you in line. Sorry, that's a little confilution. No, No,
Speaker 1: that may well be an implication. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: know how this would always come because once you introduce
Speaker 1: real world scenarios that that like brings in some other things.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I'd say in general that that kind of
Speaker 1: principle could be true from this, Yeah, because there are
Speaker 1: other social dynamics that come into play, right, Like if
Speaker 1: you were a young, able bodied person with a large
Speaker 1: cart and the person with one item is an elderly individual,
Speaker 1: you know, then you're gonna perhaps be more inclined to
Speaker 1: be like, oh, yes, please let let them go first. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think in general, people feel very differently about
Speaker 1: advantage that has been offered to someone else versus advantage
Speaker 1: that has been given to someone else without your consent. Right,
Speaker 1: the same person who would gladly let somebody with fewer
Speaker 1: items in ahead of them in line if they if
Speaker 1: it was their idea, might get really mad if the
Speaker 1: if the clerk said, you know what, why don't why
Speaker 1: doesn't this person go in front of you? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't my idea to let the like the weightlifter
Speaker 1: who's buying one muscle milk go ahead of me, because
Speaker 1: if I it was me, I'd be like, like, you know,
Speaker 1: then then it's all right if I say, hey, why
Speaker 1: don't you go ahead of me? You just got the
Speaker 1: one thing, but you have the cash radder person. The
Speaker 1: cash riders should be saying, wait, let the muscle milk
Speaker 1: buy or go first. He has only the one muscle milk.
Speaker 1: We must honor this. But then to come back to
Speaker 1: our a t M example, the first in, first out
Speaker 1: principle might devolve into the shoving principle, right, and I
Speaker 1: don't want to shove with the muscle milk guy because
Speaker 1: he's pretty jack than Now here's another interesting spending all
Speaker 1: of this. So, how does the presence of a line
Speaker 1: and our place in a line impact our perceived value
Speaker 1: of the thing we're waiting in line for? Be that thing? Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it could be an experience who are waiting
Speaker 1: to get on a line or or take a flight,
Speaker 1: Or it could be an item we're buying. It could
Speaker 1: be that cup of coffee that's scone, or that hot
Speaker 1: dog what have you. So I was looking at an
Speaker 1: article from ten titled a silver lining of standing in
Speaker 1: line queuing increases value of products. This was published in
Speaker 1: the Journal of Marketing Research by Minium Coup and uh
Speaker 1: a lit fish back, and they point out that, first
Speaker 1: of all, waiting in line obviously has both an economic
Speaker 1: cost and a psychological cost. Like we said, long lines
Speaker 1: can send the message that something is popular and in demand,
Speaker 1: but lines can also impact customer UH satisfaction or impact
Speaker 1: a business performance, and they point to several different studies
Speaker 1: on this topic. They were particularly interested in the less
Speaker 1: studied positive attributes of standing in line. So again, there's
Speaker 1: no doubt that a line can send a signal about
Speaker 1: the perceived value of the thing waiting at the end
Speaker 1: of the line. But they wanted to know how the
Speaker 1: experience of queuing affected expectations of enjoyment. This is interesting
Speaker 1: because it makes me think about cases where somebody makes
Speaker 1: certain instances of being willing to wait in line a
Speaker 1: part of their sort of personal brand or identity. Like,
Speaker 1: you know, you might be proud of the fact that
Speaker 1: I waited overnight in line to be the first person
Speaker 1: to get tickets to see the new Star Wars movie
Speaker 1: or something, you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, like
Speaker 1: I am committing in a way, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: proving like only someone this committed deserves to be first.
Speaker 1: And uh, it's an interesting spent on the whole first
Speaker 1: come first surf scenario. So the authors here they say, quote,
Speaker 1: we propose that looking behind and perceiving real or illusionary
Speaker 1: progress signals an increase in the product's value. As a result,
Speaker 1: the consumer will not only expect to like, but also
Speaker 1: actually like the product more and increase his or her expenditure.
Speaker 1: So again, the idea is you're really looking forward to
Speaker 1: buying that apple. But then the experience of waiting in
Speaker 1: line and seeing people behind you in line that makes
Speaker 1: the your anticipation of enjoyment of that apple even greater.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's got the seeing people behind you in line,
Speaker 1: more and more people lining up behind you, that makes
Speaker 1: you feel like, hey, yeah, I've really got in there
Speaker 1: at the right time. Yeah. So this is of course
Speaker 1: in line with the sunk cost effect which the author's site.
Speaker 1: The more time and effort that I've sunk into something,
Speaker 1: the more fixed I'm going to be on the idea
Speaker 1: that this was worth it, even if I've been burned
Speaker 1: in the past. So the thing you're waiting in line
Speaker 1: for then becomes more valuable than it was when you
Speaker 1: began waiting in line for it. So the study itself,
Speaker 1: which is like a series of I think five studies total,
Speaker 1: is relatively small, but the results are still interesting. And
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get into the methods of each
Speaker 1: one because you can imagine how they conducted this. They
Speaker 1: had people stand in line and they uh and they
Speaker 1: questioned them, and they manipulated things a little bit too
Speaker 1: to see, you know, how people reacted uh, And it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty obvious from the results what they did. So
Speaker 1: Study one found that the perceived value of a bagel
Speaker 1: sandwich increased in keeping with the absolute number of people
Speaker 1: behind the individual in line. Okay, so you see more
Speaker 1: people coming in behind you, you like your sandwich more
Speaker 1: and more, right now. Study to found that you could
Speaker 1: experiment with the number of people behind the individual in
Speaker 1: line to increase the perceived value of the food sample,
Speaker 1: but adjusting the number of people ahead had no measurable effect. Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't know how exactly that shakes out with their method,
Speaker 1: but that sounds to me like it might be not
Speaker 1: so much to the fact that you had to wait
Speaker 1: a certain amount of time to get something is what
Speaker 1: increases the perceived value. But seeing other people wanting the thing,
Speaker 1: as demonstrated by their being behind you in the line
Speaker 1: and and making you think of yourself as towards the
Speaker 1: front of the line increases the value. Yeah. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: idea that there are more people behind you is important
Speaker 1: and and I think also it gets into the idea
Speaker 1: that the blind is moving. You know, I am no
Speaker 1: longer last in line. So Study three and four drove
Speaker 1: home that the more you increased focus on the people
Speaker 1: behind an individual in line, the greater the perceived value
Speaker 1: of the thing that we're waiting on. And I found
Speaker 1: this especially interesting when I think about the various lines
Speaker 1: I've stood in for, say, amusement park rides, because some
Speaker 1: of them do kind of force you to realize how
Speaker 1: many people are still behind you in line, but others
Speaker 1: snake you through and interesting and novel ways put you through,
Speaker 1: you know, novel surroundings. Um though sometimes in those you
Speaker 1: still get a glance back. You occasionally get that moment
Speaker 1: to look back and see where you were previously. And
Speaker 1: I imagine, given the amount of design that goes into
Speaker 1: you know, some of these major US amusement parks, that
Speaker 1: is probably intended. There's probably some bit of research where
Speaker 1: they're like, look, it's great to to to give people
Speaker 1: the feeling that they're you know, touring a haunted museum
Speaker 1: or something on their way to ride, but we also
Speaker 1: need to remind them of how far they've come. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So lines, if you've got a big serpentine line for
Speaker 1: a ride, maybe you should wind it around one way
Speaker 1: mirrors so the people towards the front of the line
Speaker 1: can look back, but the people at the back can't.
Speaker 1: Look ahead exactly. That seems like that would be very
Speaker 1: much in keeping with this study, Like people need to
Speaker 1: know that there are a lot of people behind them
Speaker 1: in line. Uh, I guess the only the main time
Speaker 1: you need I don't know if it's possible, but the
Speaker 1: main time you would want to hide this from them
Speaker 1: is if there are very few people behind them in line,
Speaker 1: because that's when they're they're not going to there's not
Speaker 1: going to be the benefit of this effect in place
Speaker 1: that is a bad feeling. So we've been focusing on.
Speaker 1: You know, obviously, businesses want to try to avoid discomfort
Speaker 1: and displeasure coming from having to wait in line, because
Speaker 1: it's generally understood correctly that most of the time waiting
Speaker 1: in the line is unpleasant, people want to spend less
Speaker 1: time doing it. But there can be times where the
Speaker 1: line itself is kind of pleasurable, at least in my experience,
Speaker 1: and it's when there's a line that moves very quickly. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, you get in a line and you just
Speaker 1: zip right through it. I mean that almost kind of
Speaker 1: feels good. Yeah, yeah, especially if your expectation is that
Speaker 1: it will likely move slowly. Um. So yeah, there's always
Speaker 1: that that point, or there's often that point. It's unfortunately
Speaker 1: not always that point. There's often that point where you're like, oh, wow,
Speaker 1: that that line moved pretty quickly, or or one that
Speaker 1: I often find myself saying is oh, it looks like
Speaker 1: we got here at the right time. That one, especially
Speaker 1: if you you find yourself pretty far ahead in the
Speaker 1: line or there are a lot of people behind you. Um,
Speaker 1: then you you you kind of pat yourself in the back.
Speaker 1: You're like, oh, yeah, hit it at the right time,
Speaker 1: right before the lynch rush. I think I saw that
Speaker 1: recently on a like meme list of things Dad say. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know, um, as a parent especially, you're always having
Speaker 1: to put positive spins on a situation, UH, where that
Speaker 1: the child may think it's the the end of the
Speaker 1: world that you're waiting at all on anything, and you
Speaker 1: have to say, well, hey, look look at the people
Speaker 1: behind us. You know, look how far we've come, Look
Speaker 1: how fast this line is moving, et cetera. Accentuate the positive.
Speaker 1: So we'll probably get into this more in the next
Speaker 1: part of the series, but one thing I wanted to
Speaker 1: mention before we wrap up today is uh is one
Speaker 1: example of the difference between objective weight times and perceived
Speaker 1: weight times. Uh, they're just tons of studies that have
Speaker 1: been done on all different kinds of things you can
Speaker 1: do to make weight times in various forms of queuing
Speaker 1: feel longer or shorter. Obviously, usually businesses want to find
Speaker 1: ways to make them feel shorter. And a one strange
Speaker 1: one I came across was a study by Steve Oakes
Speaker 1: published in the Journal's Psychology and Marketing in two thousand
Speaker 1: three called musical tempo and waiting perceptions. So you call
Speaker 1: in for customer service on something, you're on the phone,
Speaker 1: what what do they do while you're waiting on the phone.
Speaker 1: Most of the time you get some music right right, yeah,
Speaker 1: And if it's and if it's an episode of The Simpsons,
Speaker 1: it will be something that is kind of cheekily connected
Speaker 1: to the thing you're waiting on, right, oh yeah, Like
Speaker 1: when they call in with the Krusty the clown doll
Speaker 1: that's trying to kill Homer and it's singing everybody loves
Speaker 1: the clown so why don't you? Um, Yeah, there's often
Speaker 1: stuff like that, But you might wonder, Okay, what kind
Speaker 1: of what kind of thought goes into choosing the music
Speaker 1: that's that's on the line. I mean, maybe no thought.
Speaker 1: It might just be random, who knows what different businesses do,
Speaker 1: but there could be some actual research informing what the
Speaker 1: musical selections are. Because this study found a real relationship
Speaker 1: between people's satisfaction with weight times, and they're the perceived
Speaker 1: duration of weight times based on how fast or slow
Speaker 1: the music was the beats per minute. So the author
Speaker 1: here did a thing that that was pretty clever instead
Speaker 1: of having to instead of playing different, you know, selected
Speaker 1: songs from popular music which people might already have associations
Speaker 1: with that could screw things up. Instead, the author here
Speaker 1: he used digital technology to play the same instrumental music
Speaker 1: samples with and with variability by tempo, just to isolate
Speaker 1: the variable of tempo and play basically the same songs
Speaker 1: faster or slower and see how that would affect people's
Speaker 1: perception of weight times. That they did this during UH
Speaker 1: students having to wait on undergraduate registration for for a college.
Speaker 1: And what the author found here was a significant positive
Speaker 1: relationship between the tempo of the background music and the
Speaker 1: perceived weight time. So what that means is slower tempo
Speaker 1: music made people feel like the weight time was less
Speaker 1: and faster tempo music made people feel like the weight
Speaker 1: was going on longer, which is actually a little counterintuitive
Speaker 1: to me. I might have assumed the opposite, but but
Speaker 1: it it is sort of in keeping with the kind
Speaker 1: of music I'm more often here when I'm waiting on
Speaker 1: hold to get something, you know, I'm queuing on the telephone.
Speaker 1: It's it's not usually they're not usually playing Moe her
Speaker 1: Head right, you know. It's it's something it's very like
Speaker 1: slow and languid. It's supposed to be relaxing sounding music.
Speaker 1: I remember, uh, way back when we were when we
Speaker 1: were owned by Discovery and we had to call in
Speaker 1: for a meeting. There was some old music in the
Speaker 1: waiting room for for our meeting software, and one of
Speaker 1: the songs was something I called the Spanish Villa song. Oh.
Speaker 1: It was kind of a Spanish guitar type thing. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it was very it was very like you know,
Speaker 1: a nap on a sunny afternoon. Yeah. Yeah. And it
Speaker 1: makes sense. I mean, I think it makes perfect sense
Speaker 1: because I think of like a nice, fast tempo song.
Speaker 1: I think of the BGS staying Alive, and like, that's
Speaker 1: a song when you hear it, if you hear it
Speaker 1: while you're walking. You were going to quicken your pace
Speaker 1: and walk along with that song. It's a song that
Speaker 1: makes you feel like you're getting stuff done, you're going
Speaker 1: places in life. It is the complete opposite of what
Speaker 1: waiting on hold feels like. So it it does seem
Speaker 1: like like playing staying alive would be a terrible idea
Speaker 1: for any kind of you know, on whole music situation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess you're right about that. I guess I just
Speaker 1: wouldn't have thought that. But so there is a wrinkle
Speaker 1: to this though, the effect of the music tempo on
Speaker 1: perceived weight times is dependent on the objective length of
Speaker 1: the weight time, so it breaks down like this. For
Speaker 1: short weights defined in the study is between four and
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes, slow music not only reduced perceived weight time,
Speaker 1: it reduced perceived weight time below objective weight time. So
Speaker 1: if you're waiting less than fifteen minutes, slow tempo music
Speaker 1: on average actually made the weight feel shorter than it
Speaker 1: actually was, whereas fast tempo music made it feel significantly
Speaker 1: longer than that, and then the control with no music
Speaker 1: made it feel even longer than the fast tempo music.
Speaker 1: So no music was the worst condition of all interesting. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: no music would be the worst, it seems, because then
Speaker 1: you don't even know if you're on hold anymore, right,
Speaker 1: Like the music lets me not even if the music
Speaker 1: were were incorrect, if the music were like fast paced
Speaker 1: and making it everything stretch out more, at least I
Speaker 1: know that I'm still connected. Right. Oh that that's a
Speaker 1: good point for telephone examples of this especially. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: But so the interesting thing was the benefits of slow
Speaker 1: tempo music over fast tempo music disappeared with longer waits.
Speaker 1: So once you get into between eighteen and twenty five
Speaker 1: minutes of waiting, Uh, suddenly the slow tempo music getting
Speaker 1: any better than fast tempo music. Though maybe both conditions
Speaker 1: of having music or a little bit better than no
Speaker 1: music at all. Okay, makes sense? All right, Well, I
Speaker 1: think we need to cut it there for part one,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna be back in another part to talk
Speaker 1: about all kinds of other things about queuing. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: certainly if you have thoughts, go ahead and send them in,
Speaker 1: though you know your experience with with waiting in line
Speaker 1: and how they match up with some of what we've
Speaker 1: discussed here. Uh, and yeah, join us for the next episode.
Speaker 1: We will continue the journey in the meantime, If you
Speaker 1: would like to check out other episodes of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind, you'll find them in the Stuff to
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Speaker 1: can find wherever you get your podcasts, wherever that happens
Speaker 1: to be. We just asked you rate, review, and subscribe.
Speaker 1: You can check out core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
Speaker 1: Artifact on Wednesday, We've got a little listener mail for you.
Speaker 1: On Mondays and Fridays, Is Weird How Cinema? Those are
Speaker 1: the episodes where we don't really talk about the science
Speaker 1: and the culture so much as we just talk about
Speaker 1: some weird movie and maybe tying a little science and
Speaker 1: culture if we want. But this is just our way
Speaker 1: of closing out the week. Huge thanks as always to
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with us with feedback on
Speaker 1: this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
Speaker 1: the future, or just to say hello, you can email
Speaker 1: us at contact. That's Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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