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

FoolKiller

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Feb 8, 2008
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Xsjadoblayde said:
How does one know when the "last" person to queue has arrived? This is what I do not understand.
Even worse... there would be a horde just outside the wait area trying to become last in line. And what's to stop people from the front running to the back?

This is beyond dumb.

And finally, many places have dealt with the dreaded queue in a more logical way. Oh, we have a doorcrasher for the first 50 people and you're all here 20 days early? Here's a ticket. You're number 4. If you come to the store before noon on this doorcrasher sale day, you get to buy it. After noon, we will sell the item.
 

Muspelheim

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Apr 7, 2011
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Nice try, Danskjävlar, but you will not topple the natural order of the world this time! Disorder in the queue will mean disorder in the world! This plot will not be allowed to fester one moment more! *Flips out entirely*

(Note: Danes are perfectly lovely and orderly in reality. There, I admitted it.)
 

FalloutJack

Bah weep grah nah neep ninny bom
Nov 20, 2008
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Scow2 said:
How you choose to waste your time is none of their concern. Do something productive with your time instead.
You're missing the point. The line is backwards there no matter what you say. Punishing the first people in is stupid and anti-business, which is on a first come, first serve basis. Punishing people because they're early is just completely asinine. We live in a society where promptness is rewarded and tardiness is undesireable. Plus, it's just to bullshittingly complicated and...

FoolKiller said:
Xsjadoblayde said:
How does one know when the "last" person to queue has arrived? This is what I do not understand.
Even worse... there would be a horde just outside the wait area trying to become last in line. And what's to stop people from the front running to the back?

This is beyond dumb.
 

Jake Martinez

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Apr 2, 2010
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It's hysterical to me that there are people actually arguing in favor of this dumb idea. Well, "hysterical" might be the wrong word.

What's that feeling when you realize that there's a large portion of the human race that is so irredeemably stupid that they'd be better off feeding themselves to a woodchipper? That's the word I meant.
 

Sarge034

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The real problem with lines is the exact same problem with traffic, people. If everyone had their shit together (preorders) and got out of the way when they got their thing or just did a constant speed (traffic) and didn't gawk things would go consistently. Might be a little slower service then normal business hours or a little slower then the speed limit, but you won't have those really grinding halts. That's all this system would do really, try to take away the incentive to get there super early and cause an overload before the service even starts. It's good on paper, but doesn't translate well to irl sadly.
 

JohnZ117

A blind man before the Elephant
Jun 19, 2012
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Lightknight said:
This is like saying if you pay everyone the same amount rather than rewarding hard workers that you'll have fewer hard workers.
Motivation can be a tricky thing...
PatrickJS said:
Now, researchers from Denmark - that wretched hive of scum and villainy -
You have insulted Denmark, the birthplace of Lego. Therefore, I challenge you to a duel to the pain.
 

General Torg

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Mar 12, 2009
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This only works if supply can meet demand. Try doing this in Venezuela or Jamaica and wait for the tire fires to start.
 

Veylon

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Another couple practical issues - besides all the practical issues already raised - are the fairness and predictability aspects. They are working with emotionless "agents". People in real life are anything but emotionless and fairness and predictability are a good chunk of what holds society together.

If you get in a FIFO line, you can expect to spend as much time there as anybody else in that line. Maybe it's an hour. Maybe it's ten hours. But whatever it is, nobody is getting any special breaks. You wait it out with the people next to you for as long as it takes; you're a little group together. FILO doesn't work like that; you might be stuck in that line for hours and watch dozens of neighbors come and go with only a few minutes wait. That's infuriatingly unfair and encourages resentment against whoever's behind you.

Which brings us to predictability. Anyone can look at a long, slow moving FIFO line and guess at how long they might spend in it and make a choice on whether it's worth the wait. Nobody can do that with a FILO line. You might hop on the back and immediately be taken care of. Or you might get sandwiched and become part of the damned front, forced to watch with envious, burning eyes at those lucky backfolk who come and go all day at will.

And, of course, it's easy to cheat. Suppose that you're stuck in the front. It'd be simple to leave and come back in a few minutes. Nobody's forcing you to stay there, right? Cheating is harder in a FIFO line where the only forward motion permitted is the slow locksetp and would-be queue-jumpers can be spotted instantly.

In short, it may theoretically be a better system, but it's not a human system and humans are generally the ones doing the queuing.
 

FirstNameLastName

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Nov 6, 2014
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So if the last person is served first, then what exactly stops people from simply camping outside the store but only queuing at the end?

"No, after you."
"After you, I insist."
"No really, it's okay, you can go ahead of me."
"No, you first."
"No, you first!"
"Get in the god damn queue already!"

In fact, what exactly is stopping people from simply leaving the line then re-queuing? Are the security guards going to beat me with their truncheons and drag me back to the front of the line if I try to leave? Are they going to ask ID of every person in line to stop people from re-queuing? Will they check the IDs FIFO or LIFO style? How exactly do they check all of the people's ID without causing another queue for ID checking? But the most important question of all, why are universities wasting their time with such obviously stupid ideas?
Aside from being completely unfair from a theoretical standpoint, it's even worse from an implementation perspective.
 

FogHornG36

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Jan 29, 2011
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Let us fight to be last in line!

How do you know who is last in line when people are continuing to show up? why would people line up at all, if the simple act of lining up means you will never get in until people stop showing up?
 

Janichsan

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PatrickJS said:
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.
In the light that other studies have shown that the "random order" for airplane boarding and/or parking lots is not very efficient, that does not really sound like much of an improvement?
 

Sylveria

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This does sound like something that would come out of a country with lots of easy access to cannabis, socialism, and social justice driven academia. It's that kind of unfair "fairness" that rewards people who put in the least effort equally to those who put in the most, completely disincentivizing anyone to actually put forward an effort.
 

Abomination

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I think a company will find if they make the purchase process faster rather than trying to juggle customer filtering then lines will go faster in either scenario.

The ability to not suffer fools is also a great method of speeding up queues.

Customer being unreasonable? They're not a customer. Kick them out of the line.
 

jklinders

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Sep 21, 2010
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What these crazy Danish researchers are overlooking is that the retailers like the buzz created by these lines. That is one of the reasons we have anticipated release dates of consoles that have not even been made in sufficient quantity to meet demand.

Now they clearly are not talking about something with a hard limit like concert tickets as I am sure they are just silly and not insane.

But for the love of God, the events that create these lines are intended to create these bottlenecks. The last thing the purveyors of these things want is to reduce them.
 

CrystalShadow

don't upset the insane catgirl
Apr 11, 2009
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I think what makes this fall apart for something like a console launch is not that it's inefficient for crowds, but that typically there is a lack of stock.

If you have 100 consoles, and 200 people want one, this kind of approach would cause absurd arguments.

Other than that it seems odd that this would improve efficiency, but stuff where psychology is involved can be like that at times.

If you have an empty room in a building with a lot of pedestrians (like a train station) you actually improve traffic flow if you stick and obstacle in the middle of the room.

Similarly, sticking a pole right in the middle of an emergency exit, rather counter-intuitively, gets people out of the building faster.

Deliberately leaving a gap in traffic also speeds up traffic flow in general...

All of these things aren't necessarily obvious, but they work.
For some reason, they work.

Time for the LIFO stack to make it's mark!
 

NickBrahz

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I think lining up for stuff for days or hours for a launch is stupid especially when it comes to games, come on if you really want a game first second its out you would use PC and pre-order it that way you dont waste time going back home to play it, baring its an exclusive for console of course and which it's been a while since i checked but don't consoles now offer day 1 digital for games?

But anyway i digress, punishing people is stupid, if you don't want those crazy fanatics lining up for hours to get it first then you should not offer the ability for them to line up, shouldn't them lining up for hoursbe considered loitering or something? why can't those businesses that don't like it just shoo them away.
 

Gethsemani_v1legacy

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Muspelheim said:
Nice try, Danskjävlar, but you will not topple the natural order of the world this time! Disorder in the queue will mean disorder in the world! This plot will not be allowed to fester one moment more! *Flips out entirely*

(Note: Danes are perfectly lovely and orderly in reality. There, I admitted it.)
You are going about this the wrong way. We are Swedes, we just need to apply Jante Law to our Scandinavian compatriots: "Oh, you made a research paper. Does this make you special, Denmark? Do you think it makes you stand out? The rest of us are using lines when we wait for things, do you think you are better than us?"

Zacharious-khan said:
Ok everyone it's not a Queue anymore, A FILO (first in, last out) system is called a Stack.
And now I want to play Magic: the Gathering.
 

MrFalconfly

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Sep 5, 2011
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Dimitriov said:
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!
We do know to queue.

Or rather. Most of us (except those guys at SDU who conducted this study) know how to queue.
 

Lightknight

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Nov 26, 2008
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I kind of want to know where this team got their funding? Were they paid money that could otherwise have gone to legitimate studies or research? If so, what a shame.