While we were watching the St. George’s Day scout parade in Chandler’s Ford last week, we killed time between the parades by going to the posh-person’s supermarket to do a bit of shopping and have a coffee.
The shopping part of the expedition was successful. We soon found the few items that we needed. Not so the coffee part, however. The queue was long and not moving very quickly. And a quick glance at the seating area suggested that we would be lucky to find a table.
Table Hogging
The problem? Table hogging – by people who had no food or drink. Something that, as I slowly approach the age of a grumpy old man, I find increasingly annoying.
You know the scenario: the shop is busy and there’s a bit of a queue. Someone says “I’ll go and grab a table.” NO NO NO. Tables should be taken in the same order as people queue at the counter. Anything else is queue-jumping. And if the café has worked out its queue theory correct, there is no need.
Queue Theory is a branch of statistics that I remember touching on at A-level (but can’t remember much about it other than my maths teacher telling us that the Café at the National Theatre has it just right as you can always find a table no matter how busy it appears to be).
You work out the likely number of customer and how long they are likely to stay and this tells you how many tables you need. If it is calculated correctly, no one needs to “grab a table” – in fact, grabbing a table makes it worse as it messes the calculations up.
Of course, it could also be that the St George’s Day parade has messed the calculations up – Waitrose hadn’t expected so many people to come in at the same time.
In the end we gave up and went to the King Rufus, where there were lots of tables and the coffee came with a small complimentary biscuit.
If a supermarket gives free coffee every day to customers (or people who go there only for free coffee), and a coffee shop gives you ‘buy one and get one free’ to boost business, how does it affect your queue theory calculation?
Shouldn’t be a problem so long as they have factored this into their calculations. The free coffee supermarket just needs to calculate that they may get more customers than if all drinks had to be paid for (which brings in a bit of economics: the lower the price, the greater the demand. And discriminatory pricing (reduced price to some coffee shop customers, but only those who go to the supermarket first)).
Is the BOGOF offer two customers for the price of one, or a free refill. If the former, there could be twice as many customers through the door (and customers may stay for longer as they will be with a companion so sit and chat for longer). If the latter, each customer could stay for twice as long (and they may get more customers as well because of the effective price reduction).
I read an article recently about a restaurant which couldn’t understand why their profits had dropped to a third of what they had been in the previous years. They did a time and motion study to see how long it took people to order and to be served and they found that although the staff were just as quick at serving, it was the customers and their mobile phones that were slowing things down.
Apparently, instead of perusing the menu, customers would sit and text. Then when the waitress came for their order they would start looking at the menu. Once their food arrived they would take photo’s of the food, their friends’ food, and selfies with food. The food would be cold by the time they started eating. Then more texting, before finally leaving. The restaurant found that people could spend up to three times longer to eat their meals just because they were too busy texting! I think modern economics needs to incorporate today’s youngsters’ need to photograph their food before they eat it!
And table-hoggers are probably just people with tired feet who need to sit down and can’t wait.
But if they didn’t sit down before they had their food the queue would move more quickly, because it wouldn’t be held up by people looking for tables. Obviously this applies only to cafeteria style places, not “order from your table” places.
I’ve been told (though not been there to confirm it) that the Wykham Arms in Winchester bans the use of mobile phones in the bar area. People who text are banished to the garden. This rule should be adopted in more establishments.