Lines. They’re everywhere.
Lines to board a plane. Lines to get off the plane.
Lines in the carpool lane. Lines in the checkout lane.
Lines to get interviewed. Lines to get promoted.
Lines to give blood. Lines to give birth.
Outside Immigration Services, queues of people wait eagerly to gain citizenship.
Inside City Hall, rows of exuberant couples wait to get married.
Modern life is an interminable series of lines. As society progresses, we've become increasingly dependent on them. Click To TweetModern life is an interminable series of lines. As society progresses, we’ve become increasingly dependent on them.
We train our children to walk in single file. We institute waitlists for college admissions. We build entire apps to manage restaurant wait times.
Lines are simply a social mechanism we devised to manage concurrent demand for a particular resource. The scarcer the resource, the longer the lines. Because lines facilitate civilization, it’s hard to imagine life without them.
However, lines are imperfect.
Like most things, they have opportunity costs. Not only do we give up precious time that could be spent doing something else, we risk passing up another line entirely.
They’re also notoriously inefficient. It’s often hard to tell which line will be faster. We may bet on the wrong line and fall behind. The item may run out or the shop may close before we make it to the front of the line. Someone might budge us. Or, we may simply change our mind. Lines are a gamble.
Nonetheless, we spend most of our days rushing through one line only to get in the next. We’re all in line for something or another.
The question is: Which line are you in? Is it worthwhile?
