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As a human, I am a professional at waiting in lines! Two really interesting examples are waiting in line at the grocery store and waiting in lines at Disney Land/World rides.

An interesting thing about waiting in line at the grocery store is that ironically people generally always look for out for themselves and seek the shortest line to get in (unless there is a line restriction like 20 items or less). Surprisingly this is a good thing. By looking for the shortest line, customers help to balance out the lines and distribute themselves accordingly. Often people in a line will note if there seems to be a hold up at the front of the line and shift to another line that seems to be moving along. All of this sorting seems to help the store and benefit the customers simultaneously. Further, as mentioned above, some stores have specialty lines, for example, less than XX number of items. This theory being that those purchases are short and can be processed relatively quicker, and contribute to shortening all of the other lines as well.

Disney studies the mathematics of waiting in lines. They process millions of guests a year (although not right now) through rides and have figured out who to move bend and move exceptionally long lines so that customers can be stacked up and move in a uniform direction. One creation of Disney to impact line waits is the "Fast Pass". For this line, a customer takes a ticket and is given time to come back to the ride and may enter the shorter and quicker "Fast Pass" line. This encourages customers to find something else to do while they are effectively waiting, just not in the line. Additions to the fast pass allow customers to purchase Fast Pass, uh passes. This is an added revenue stream for customers who can afford to pay a little extra for the privilege of waiting less.

In both the Disney and grocery store cases, processes created and tweaked by managers work to minimize line, maximize processing speed, and hopefully increase consumer satisfaction.