4 ms·
Ask HN: How long is too long when waiting in line before leaving?
- sp332 7y agoIf you don't need the thing, why are you waiting in line to begin with? If you don't have anything better to do... wait.
- draw_down 7y agoDepends on how patient I’m feeling. I usually think about how badly I really need/want whatever the line is for, and choose based on that. But since there isn’t much that I really need, I tend to bail pretty quick. Waiting behind people who don’t know what they want is a major pet peeve of mine.
- jimmyvalmer 7y agothere's a whole discipline devoted to this subject, aptly named "queuing theory." personally, i always wait because I feel more regret if I later find out the line accelerated than I do self-satisfaction if I find out the line barely budged.
- sturza 7y agowhat about "cutting your losses"?
- jimmyvalmer 7y agoWhat about it? Reduce the problem down to: "how much longer should I wait to move up the line one place?" If that time interval follows an exponential distribution, then no amount of time elapsed will help you make that decision.
- sturza 7y agoIf you can quantify the time you spend on this activity and the value you get, it seems that the value only decreases over time. (If you count time "left" as your only currency)
- jimmyvalmer 7y agoSunk cost fallacy. Look it up. Your future value of waiting does not change with time.
- dlphn___xyz 7y agohow valuable is your time?
- CM30 7y agoDepends what you're waiting for. Personally I'd say about 15-20 minutes is the max for something you can easily get elswhere (like food or many consumer items), 30-40 minutes would be a good maximum for methods of transport wherever there are alternative routes available, and you should only wait indefinitely if you're 100% certain whatever you're waiting for is only available at that location on that day/at that time.
- shoo 7y agoNeeds far more context. I queued up buy lunch for about 5 seconds until walking away after I'd considered the length of the line and the fact that there's another lunch place I like that's often not as busy 100m away. I've queued for many hours to catch a delayed plane flight. Conceivably you could get me to queue for months or a year with a big enough carrot ("for some crazy reason we're giving away pretty nice houses to anyone who queues for them")
- Spooky23 7y agoIf it’s open ended, 15m.