Get to the back - and be the first one served

Illustration / Rod Emmerson

The way we queue might be all wrong. It could be that - as the Bible says - the last should indeed be the first.

That's what two Danish academics conclude in a paper they call "The curse of the first-in-first-out queue discipline".

Economists Trine Tornoe Platz and Lars Peter Osterdal say the best method of serving a queue is to serve the last person first.

This is because the first-in-first-out system encourages people to join the queue early, causing a backlog of people and increasing everyone's waiting time.

If the last person were served first, there would be no incentive to get there early.

In worst-case scenarios - the queue for big-game tickets, teens queueing for a pair of hot fashion shoes - people turn up really early, causing a bottleneck and a complete break in movement.

This results in the longest possible wait time for everyone.

Serving the latest person first encourages people to come at a slower rate, the researchers say, reducing the amount of time spent in line and therefore ensuring pretty much everyone who turns up is served immediately.

Some may argue that this is unfair, and that sometimes fairness should come before efficiency - people shouldn't be rewarded for being late.

But the findings could revolutionise our lives - we apparently spend six months of our lives in queues - and make trips to theme parks and crowded lunch venues less stressful.