That is the promise being made by a company called QLess, which offers “virtual queue management” via cellphone* alerts. Its home page makes this alluring statement/threat: “On average, Americans spend almost 3 years of their lives waiting in line.”
This is one area (perhaps of many) in which I am way below average. I hate lines, and waiting in general, so much that I take great pains to avoid them both, whether it’s a physical line or a telephonic one.
So the QLess premise seems promising to me, if a bit familiar: if I recall correctly, a similar technology is already in place at such fine establishments as Chuck E. Cheese’s. When you show up, they give you a little electronic box to put in your pocket so you can wander around until they buzz you via the box. Granted, the idea of using your own hardware, and not having to physically be on the premises first, is a big advantage. I can see ways in which QLess might backfire — if it’s free for customers, it may get clogged by no-shows, or even competitors — but I can also see how it might make life much more enjoyable.
*In keeping with our occasional renaming exercise, can we please stop calling the cellphone a “cellphone” and instead call it a “mobile,” as the British do, and which makes much more sense?
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3 years in a 75-year lifespan is around an hour per day. An hour total per day for traffic, groceries, fast food, etc. does not seem unreasonable.
Interesting that you say “stop calling the cellphone a ‘cellphone’” rather than “stop calling the mobile phone a ‘cellphone’”.
Should we stop calling a spade a spade and instead call a spade a shovel?
Ok my analogy isn’t a perfect fit, but I stand by the irony!
#10 is right, 3years in 75 is an hour a day.
But if you don’t count traffic, since there is no way out of it, nobody spends 60mins a day in line.
I think there are restaurants that will call you rather than give you one of those LED lit pagers when your table is ready.
How about this for a new nickname, ‘phone’. Since landline phones are losing share and the cell phones are gaining. One of these days Alice!
would that brooklynfoodie were correct.
more like bakers, butchers and every government agency ever invented.
I sold my restaurant queue beeper for $5 one night in Houston, after my friend and I had found a booth in the bar area. Around the time we were finishing our pizza it went off, and I walked outside and offered it to pairs who were loitering; I just told them to say the name was “Jim.”
If we can call them “movies,” I suppose “celly” will do.
How exactly does “mobile” make more sense? Cellphone is more descriptive and more accurate. Mobile can refer either to a cellphone or a wireless house phone. A cellphone is a telephone that operates by transmitting and receiving from a tower that operates its own cell.
Standing in line is for chumps.
Owning a cell phone is for chumps.
Take a moment to display some independence and think for yourself for once and you’ll have no need to do either…and be better off for it.