If you find yourself waiting in a long queue at an airport or bus terminus this holiday, will you try to analyze what it is about queuing that makes you angry? Or will you just get angry with the nearest official?
Professor Richard Larson, an electrical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, hates queuing but rather than tear his hair out, he decided to study the subject. {{U}}(46) {{/U}}.He cites an experiment at Houston airport where passengers had to walk for oue minute from the plane to the baggage reclaim and then wait a further seven minutes to collect their luggage. Complaints were frequent, especially from those who had spent seven minutes watching passengers with just hand baggage get out immediately.
The airport authorities decided to lengthen the walk from the aircraft, so that instead of a one-minute fast walk, the passengers spent six minutes walking{{U}} (47) {{/U}}.The extra walk extended the delay by five minutes for those carrying only hand baggage, but passenger complaints dropped almost to zero.
The reason? Larson suggests that it all has to do with what he calls "social justice". If people see others taking a short cut, they will find the wait unbearable{{U}} (48) {{/U}}.
Another aspect Larson studied was the observation that people get more fed up if they are not told what is going on{{U}} (49) {{/U}}.
But even knowing how long we have to wait isn't the whole answer. We must also believe that everything is being done to minimize our delay. Larson cites the example of two neighboring American banks. One was highly computerized and served a customer, on average, every 30 seconds.{{U}} (50) {{/U}}But because the tellers at the second bank looked extremely busy, customers believed the service was faster and many transferred their accounts to the slower bank. Ultimately, the latter had to introduce time-wasting ways of appearing more dynamic.
A) So in the case of the airport, it was preferable to delay everyone.
B) The other bank was less automated and took twice as long.
C) When they finally arrived at the baggage reclaim, the delay was then only two minutes.
D) His first finding, which backs up earlier work at the US National Science Foundation, was that the degree of annoyance was not directly related to the time.
E) It's unbearable for the airport to delay everyone.
F) Passengers told that there will be a half-hour delay are less unhappy than those left waiting even twenty minutes without an explanation.