February 1, 2012 | Categories: Crowd Control

The average person spends approximately two to three years of his waking life waiting in line. Although that might sound like a long time, a certain professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is researching different ways to make waiting in queue bearable and even more enjoyable for people, according to BostInno.

Richard Larson, professor and director of the Center for Engineering Systems Fundamentals, claims that every queue a person enters is a potential opportunity for businesses - therefore, finding ways to keep customers occupied and happy while waiting their turn would be in the company's benefit.

"Who but Disney could get people to wait 45 minutes for a two-minute ride? Their visitors are so distracted, they voluntarily prolong their waits," Larson told the news source. The professor later went on to explain certain queuing jargon, which he claims was important for him in developing equations to mathematically explain the phenomenon that occurs when people decide to leave a line after they have waited for a certain amount of time.

Larson theorized that distracting customers with TV or mirrors can help them stay in queue for a longer period of time. He cited mirrors specifically because they allow people in line to flirt with others without having to look at them directly.