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Any time that you are purchasing a product or a service you are usually in a waiting line. The most frequent lines that consumers are a part of on a weekly basis are restaurants and gas stations. Sometimes the lines are determined by the price of the goods or the services or the location. Customers base their desire to wait in line on gauging how long it is going to take and what they are trying to buy. The amount of desired wait time is based on the need for the item. When you go to a fast food restaurant they make the drive through the priority so those customers usually get their food first. When you choose the option to dine inside then restaurants assume that you have more time to spend. Based on the demand some restaurants designate employees to focus solely on the drive through and others on the customers that come inside to eat.

Managers have to consider three things; customer, service and queue characteristics when determining the waiting line. Using the restaurant example above, most restaurants can gauge when they will have the highest customer volume. Usually sandwich shops will see an increase of customers during lunch time or Waffle House will see a spike in customers in the morning or after bars close. When a business introduces a new product that everyone goes crazy for like the Popeyes chicken sandwich, the restaurant wasnt able to adjust to the spike in customers but due to the desire of the customer they were willing to wait a long time to try it. The next characteristic, service is based on the amount of time it takes to complete the service. Usually these are easier to determine because you can base it on the time it takes to make a chicken sandwich. Things that are not considered would be substitutions or changes to the original product that take longer to make because it will be different every time. Some restaurants record the amount of time it takes for their employees to fulfill an order to be able to come up with better ways to improve their process. The queue characteristic is based on who becomes the priority. The customer who orders the least amount of food will feel like they should be served first but to ensure that customers are assisted in an orderly fashion would be to serve them as a first come first serve order. If the customer is going through the drive through they will be considered a customer in a hurry and will be served first due to the lines produced outside of the establishment