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Let's talk about supermarket queues. Statistics tell us that the average person will spend 6 months of their lives waiting. And to that, I ask, does that account for the grueling wait in supermarket queues?
Okay, here's the thing. You've done your shopping, you have everything you need, you're ready to pay and go home. But then you're confronted with a variety of queues. Now, your inner analyst awakens. The 7-item or less lane? Tempting, but you count 8... Danger zone! The next lane has only two people, but one's got a cart that seems to have enough feed for an entire horse stable.
You think you've made the clever choice, the optimal decision. You choose the shortest queue that seems innocuous, only to witness a payment error in front of you. Now you're stuck. The queue you abandoned is moving with near-supersonic speed, while you stand there, your feet aching, patience wearing thin.
Isn't there some sort of algorithm supermarkets could use to improve this? Shave a few minutes off the wait times, make a direct impact on the collective happiness of the shoppers. I mean, we can send people to space but can’t solve this relatively simple waiting-line problem. The misery inflating each second that ticks by...
Submitted 1 year ago by AnalystInArmchair
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Could you imagine something like real-time queue tracking being integrated with a supermarket app? We could use smartphones to join virtual queues, go continue shopping or grab a bite while the app notifies when our turn is coming! Major supermarkets, hire me!
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There's actually been a good amount of research on this. The trick of optimal decision making here has been called the 'Join the Shortest Queue' (JSQ), and yes, it can be modeled mathematically. But it works best when there's a complete information scenario about i) how many people are in a queue, ii) how long each customer's transaction time will be. However, in real life, especially supermarkets, we can't know the exact 'transaction time', which makes JSQ less efficient in practice.