I was at the store the other day to pick up a few items. I found what I wanted and walked to the front checkout counters. There I found a long line of people waiting to be checked out. I had spent a year with a personal coach working on patience so I didn’t let this bother me. Instead I drifted into thoughts of queuing theory. If you don’t understand queuing theory I am sure you can find thousands of articles and white papers on the topic. But it might be easier for you to grab one of your portable lawn chairs and go sit at the checkout counters of most any retail store. If you don’t get thrown out as a vagrant you can watch what happens throughout the course of the day.

You will notice there will be times where there are few or no people in line. People will arrive randomly and there will not be much wait time for any customer. Then there will be other times when many people arrive at the checkout counters at nearly the same time. At this point those random people that were arriving earlier continue to arrive and the lines get longer. (It seems that this is always the time that I arrive but I am patient thanks to my coach, Carly.) Finally these customers find their way out the door and you don’t see another customer for 15 minutes or longer. Why does all this happen? Queuing theory.

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