As shoppers rush to stores like Best Buy in the waning hours of the 2008 holiday shopping season, lines get longer and longer at the checkout lanes. Some stores use multiple queues, while retailers like Best Buy use the "single serpentine" strategy, in which a single line feeds shoppers to all lanes.
According to "queue science" expert and director of its Center for Engineering Systems Fundamentals Richard Larson, the single-line solution is better for everyone involved.
"With a few exceptions, people generally prefer a single line because it guarantees first-come, first-served," he said by phone from his office at MIT. "In a simple situation like retail, where everyone thinks they're equally important, they want social justice and fairness, which is first-come, first-served.
"The average waiting time in both kinds of lines is the same. But the variance of the time is much larger when you don't have a serpentine line. You stand a chance of being a big winner. You also stand a chance of being a big loser."
