Unit4 passage2
How to Jump Queue Fury
[1] If you find yourself waiting in a long queue at an airport or
bus terminus this holiday, will you try to analyse what it is
about queuing that makes you angry? Or will you just get angry
with the nearest official?
[2] 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. 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. He cites an experiment at Houston
airport where passengers had to walk for one 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.
[3] 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. When they finally arrived
at the baggage reclaim, the delay was then only two minutes. The
extra walk extended the delay by five minutes for those carrying
only hand baggage, but passenger complaints dropped almost to
zero.
[4] The reason? Larson suggests that it all has to do with what
he calls 鈥?nbsp;social justice 鈥?nbsp;. If people see others taking a
short cut , they will find the wait unbearable . So in the case
of the airport, it was preferable to delay everyone.
[5] Another aspect Larson studied was the observation that people
get more fed up if they are not told what is going on. Passengers
told that there will be a half-hour delay are less unhappy than
those left waiting even twenty minutes without an explanation.