Evil Danish Researchers Say Lines Should Be Last Come, First Served

PatrickJS

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Evil Danish Researchers Say Lines Should Be Last Come, First Served



Researchers from the University of Southern Denmark have published a study in which they suggest we've all been lining up wrong - and they know how to fix it.

Lining up for the launch of Denmark is a wonderful place with wonderful people [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/127621-Apple-Fans-Camp-Out-For-iPhone-That-Doesnt-Exist-Yet]!)[/I]

What Trine Tornøe Platz and Lars Peter Østerdal, from the University of Southern Denmark, propose is this: the "first come, first served" principle of queuing is a "curse." We should not be rewarding the parking lot campers; instead, the last people to arrive should be the first to receive service [http://static.sdu.dk/mediafiles//1/9/5/%7B195881C4-8779-48E9-8C38-D935159DE32F%7Ddpbe10_2012.pdf].

What.

Their logic is this: incentivizing people to arrive early ends up causing the longest average wait times. Under their alternative model, people change their behavior, arriving at the queue at a slower rate. This alleviates the dreaded "bottleneck scenario," and thus congestion and long waits.

In an experiment involving over a hundred volunteers [http://static.sdu.dk/mediafiles//4/3/F/%7B43F80C9B-3533-4838-9E08-DE09931B9379%7Ddpbe12_2014.pdf], this seemingly crazy notion actually held water. A close second to the "last come" model is the "random order" model, a bit like how airplane boarding works, or drivers leaving a parking lot all at once after a big event. Despite the efficiency, most volunteers agreed it all felt a little unfair.


Even one of the main researchers isn't entirely convinced [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03115gg], according to his interview with the BBC.

Now, I'm all for science trumping common sense - but this is a step too far. Who thinks this could ever be implemented? Besides, line-ups are the best time to play my 3DS. When am I going to finish Fire Emblem [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/10165-Fire-Emblem-Awakening-Review], if not when I'm stuck at the passport office for eight hours?

Source: QZ.com [http://qz.com/496525/danish-researchers-have-an-enraging-proposal-to-speed-up-queues-serve-the-last-person-first/]

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Dimitriov

The end is nigh.
May 24, 2010
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And the most efficient way to end war forever would be to kill every person on the planet. But it wouldn't be the best way.

Learn to queue Denmark!
 

Areloch

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Dec 10, 2012
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The biggest issue I see with this isn't the idea behind the method, but there being any reasonable means to prevent first-come-first-serve from occurring. You have 3 customers walk in after the store opens and they get in line. Well, you have to serve them in the order they walk up, yes?

This could be good on a per-store-discretion basis to mitigate people showing up EARLY, but this is not a system that could ever really be used to replace first-come lines during operational periods.
 

Lightknight

Mugwamp Supreme
Nov 26, 2008
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Um... duh. If you remove the incentive of showing up early then people aren't going to show up early.

Of course if someone waits there for three days then it's going to be longer than a scenario where people who don't wait in line get rewarded. This is just nonsensical.

This is like saying if you pay everyone the same amount rather than rewarding hard workers that you'll have fewer hard workers.

What is the goal here? The overall wait time of a person who comes late doesn't change. Just the wait time of campers and they are specifically doing that to ensure they get a copy. So who benefits here? Are they honestly forgetting that people are spending their time waiting in order to ensure a copy? Maybe the author of the paper was going to get a game and suddenly found himself at the end of the line and said, "This is ridiculous, I should be the first to go, not the last...".

The end result would be a bunch of campers sitting in a parking lot waiting to sprint to the store the moment the door opens so that they're technically not in line. I'm sure a massive sprint to the door would be totally safe in all instances with absolutely no trample victims...
 

Neurotic Void Melody

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How does one know when the "last" person to queue has arrived? This is what I do not understand.

"Badge of honour." I think that's a generous term for truly dedicated consumerist. Consumer fanatic maybe.
 

FalloutJack

Bah weep grah nah neep ninny bom
Nov 20, 2008
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Look, just because it says it in the bible doesn't mean that this is how you work a line. People who take the time to get in line ahead of others should not be thrown in back, not when they probably sacrificed time and other plans to be there. That's stupid. I will now end with the obligatory quotation from Hamlet...

"There is something rotten in the state of Denmark."
 

thewatergamer

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I don't get how this is news to the "scientists" first of all, remove the reason for showing up and people don't show up, huh go figure, second of all how exactly is this supposed to work in any practical way and most importantly Why the fuck is a University A UNIVERSITY spending time and money researching this?
 

Barbas

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Oct 28, 2013
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I say let's do it. It'll at least be entertaining.

thewatergamer said:
I don't get how this is news to the "scientists" first of all, remove the reason for showing up and people don't show up, huh go figure, second of all how exactly is this supposed to work in any practical way and most importantly Why the fuck is a University A UNIVERSITY spending time and money researching this?
It's only a study. How many hundreds of experiments and studies could you do in all the time you had at university? Maybe it was just part of their degree.
 

thewatergamer

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Barbas said:
I say let's do it. It'll at least be entertaining.

thewatergamer said:
I don't get how this is news to the "scientists" first of all, remove the reason for showing up and people don't show up, huh go figure, second of all how exactly is this supposed to work in any practical way and most importantly Why the fuck is a University A UNIVERSITY spending time and money researching this?
It's only a study. How many hundreds of experiments and studies could you do in all the time you had at university? Maybe it was just part of their degree.
I guess you do have a point, doesn't change the fact that the study is completely useless though, what exactly is it's purpose?
 

Paradoxrifts

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And then stores will have customers waiting just around the corner so that they can make a mad dash for the store entrance to be the first served. Unless of course staff have to interrupt a person that they're in the middle of serving in order to serve the freshest customer that just walked into the store. This just could not work in real life. It would result in injuries and casualties.
 

webkilla

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The funny thing is that in Denmark (I live in it) we're actually really damn good at waiting in lines.

But ok, the paper seems legit - though I would like to see some larger sample groups, and similar tests done with children, teenagers, 20-somethings, and elderly people.
 

Barbas

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thewatergamer said:
Barbas said:
I say let's do it. It'll at least be entertaining.

thewatergamer said:
I don't get how this is news to the "scientists" first of all, remove the reason for showing up and people don't show up, huh go figure, second of all how exactly is this supposed to work in any practical way and most importantly Why the fuck is a University A UNIVERSITY spending time and money researching this?
It's only a study. How many hundreds of experiments and studies could you do in all the time you had at university? Maybe it was just part of their degree.
I guess you do have a point, doesn't change the fact that the study is completely useless though, what exactly is it's purpose?
I've no idea what the department was. It must have had some use, though; with the workload at university it's far more likely that the studies they spend time on do count toward something. Beyond that, I'm stumped. It got them in BBC news, which must have pleased someone in administration.

Actually, now that I think of it, this could change rather a lot if larger studies do show a decrease in congestion. Like trying to manage traffic problems, I suppose.
 

09philj

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Even the researcher didn't actually think this was feasible in real life, even if it makes sense on paper. [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03115gg]
 

PatrickJS

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09philj said:
Even the researcher didn't actually think this was feasible in real life, even if it makes sense on paper. [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03115gg]
Thank you for finding that! I think I'll include a link in the article above
 

Baresark

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It's a convoluted way to get to no one arriving early. What they are proposing is first come first serve at the time the sales begin. meaning that you ignore the population who arrived before said item was on sale. It makes sense to say that no one is allowed to wait in line for products not out yet and you would have the same results.

From a customer service perspective, people waiting for excessive amounts of time is a failure. But it's also an even worse failure to punish the people who have been waiting the longest, you are only then compounding your bad customer service.
 

SupahEwok

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"We model a congested facility that serves agents with a fixed capacity from a given point in time."
"agents with a fixed capacity"
And that's where the study would fall apart under the rigors of practicality, if I'm reading this right.

They tested lines with an unwavering number of 100 subjects. What happens when that number fluctuates like in many real world scenarios? It can't deal with a steadily increasing rate of subjects.

For instance, let's imagine a video game shop at opening time. For the sake of the argument, we'll say that they can only service 1 customer at a time. If you ever have a rate of more than 1 customer getting in line per customer leaving the line, you'll never reach the bottom of it. This is fine in a scenario where you're working from front to back, as you're still getting through the whole line with just the average time waiting rising as the line goes longer but when working from back to front you'll have a "trap" where people at the front never receive service at all, becoming massive outliers.

To be fair, I don't think the purpose of this study was to change the way lines work at stores, as the article implies. I think the authors are just studying the effects of a static queue, such as the wait for airplanes. At least in the US, how many seats are filled is a constant number for some time before queuing begins, so you don't have to worry about an infinite wait time for those at the front of the line. As a matter of fact, every airplane boarding I can remember gives everyone either a set boarding number (C15 will be the 15th person to board in the 3rd group), or assigns a place in the queue according to seat position (seats in the front board before seats in the back, or vice versa). If I read it right, the primary purpose of the study is to reduce congestion in a static queue from everyone rushing to be first and getting in each others way. Still, if this were implemented on a larger scale in the real world I can't help but think that the congestion will happen anyway, as everyone slows down to be at the end. Not to mention that it would play havoc on anything that has to be completed within a certain time, such as airplane takeoff or closing time in a parking lot. And what do you do with the folks that show up first in line while the line takes 15 minutes to form? Just tell them to wait so they can be serviced last?
 

thewatergamer

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Barbas said:
thewatergamer said:
Barbas said:
I say let's do it. It'll at least be entertaining.

thewatergamer said:
I don't get how this is news to the "scientists" first of all, remove the reason for showing up and people don't show up, huh go figure, second of all how exactly is this supposed to work in any practical way and most importantly Why the fuck is a University A UNIVERSITY spending time and money researching this?
It's only a study. How many hundreds of experiments and studies could you do in all the time you had at university? Maybe it was just part of their degree.
I guess you do have a point, doesn't change the fact that the study is completely useless though, what exactly is it's purpose?
I've no idea what the department was. It must have had some use, though; with the workload at university it's far more likely that the studies they spend time on do count toward something. Beyond that, I'm stumped. It got them in BBC news, which must have pleased someone in administration.

Actually, now that I think of it, this could change rather a lot if larger studies do show a decrease in congestion. Like trying to manage traffic problems, I suppose.
Exactly my point, its just a waste of time and money, even if its not that significant it's more the idea that somebody at a university actually thought that this was a feasible enough idea to spend resources on it...
 

Scow2

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thewatergamer said:
Barbas said:
thewatergamer said:
Barbas said:
I say let's do it. It'll at least be entertaining.

thewatergamer said:
I don't get how this is news to the "scientists" first of all, remove the reason for showing up and people don't show up, huh go figure, second of all how exactly is this supposed to work in any practical way and most importantly Why the fuck is a University A UNIVERSITY spending time and money researching this?
It's only a study. How many hundreds of experiments and studies could you do in all the time you had at university? Maybe it was just part of their degree.
I guess you do have a point, doesn't change the fact that the study is completely useless though, what exactly is it's purpose?
I've no idea what the department was. It must have had some use, though; with the workload at university it's far more likely that the studies they spend time on do count toward something. Beyond that, I'm stumped. It got them in BBC news, which must have pleased someone in administration.

Actually, now that I think of it, this could change rather a lot if larger studies do show a decrease in congestion. Like trying to manage traffic problems, I suppose.
Exactly my point, its just a waste of time and money, even if its not that significant it's more the idea that somebody at a university actually thought that this was a feasible enough idea to spend resources on it...
That... is not how university studies generally work. They're generally some sort of class project, like all those stupid 'experiments' you did in High School Science class that you already knew the outcome of, but more unique. While technically the University 'paid' for the study, it's more likely that it's actually funded by the students involved.

FalloutJack said:
People who take the time to get in line ahead of others should not be thrown in back, not when they probably sacrificed time and other plans to be there.
How you choose to waste your time is none of their concern. Do something productive with your time instead.