Waiting Is Torture references the experience of waiting, whether for luggage or groceries, is defined only partly by the objective length of the wait. [1] “Often the psychology of queuing is more important than the statistics of the wait itself,” notes the MIT operations researcher Richard Larson, widely considered to be the world’s foremost expert on lines.
Occupied time (walking to baggage claim) feels shorter than unoccupied time (standing at the carousel). Research on queuing has shown that, on average, people overestimate how long they’ve waited in a line by about 36 percent.
Americans spend 37 billion hours each year waiting in line. The dominant cost of waiting is an emotional one: stress, boredom, that nagging sensation that one’s life is slipping away. The last thing we want to do with our dwindling leisure time is squander it in stasis.
Examples
Houston Airport
Some years ago, executives at a Houston airport faced a troubling issue. Passengers were lodging an inordinate number of complaints about the waits at baggage claim. In response, the executives increased the number of baggage handlers. The plan worked: the average wait fell to eight minutes, well within industry benchmarks. But the complaints persisted. [1]
Puzzled, executives undertook a more careful, on-site analysis. They found that it took passengers a minute to walk from their arrival gates to baggage claim and seven more minutes to get their bags. 88% of their time was spent waiting for their bags.
So the airport decided on a new approach: instead of reducing wait times, it moved the arrival gates away from the main terminal and routed bags to the outermost carousel.
Passengers now walked six times longer to get their bags. Complaints dropped to near zero.
Elevator Mirrors
This is also why one finds mirrors next to elevators. The idea was born during the post-World War II boom, when new high-rises led to complaints about elevator delays. The rationale behind the mirrors was similar to the one used at the Houston airport: give people something to occupy their time, and the wait will feel shorter. With the mirrors, people could check their hair or slyly ogle other passengers. And it worked: almost overnight, the complaints ceased.
Disney Over-Delivers
And beating expectations buoys our mood. All else being equal, people who wait less than they anticipated leave happier than those who wait longer than expected. This is why Disney, the universally acknowledged master of applied queuing psychology, overestimates wait times for rides, so that its guests — never customers, always guests — are pleasantly surprised when they ascend Space Mountain ahead of schedule.
References
- Why Waiting Is Torture, nytimes.com
- Houston Airport Had A Problem