Brits are losing their lives ready in queues as knowledge exposes the place we wait most
Whilst Brits are known for their patience and love of a good queue — but now it has been revealed that we are actually wasting our lives standing in line in different places
Brits are a patient bunch – wasting 3% of their entire lives waiting in queues. Researchers analysed the times we wait in queues for supermarkets, post offices, bus stops, sports events, car parks and in traffic in a bid to find out just how much time we ‘waste’.
Across the UK as a whole, the study found that we queue up for, on average, 39m 54s every single day. Spare a thought for the 9m Londoners, however, who queue up for a whopping 2hrs 10m-a-day – that’s more than three times the average time Brits queue up outside of the capital.
Taken over a week, the average Brit — excluding Londoners — queue up for 4hrs 39m, which works out at just over 10 full days-a-year. That’s just under 3% of all the time in an entire year — waiting, and waiting.
Over a lifetime, that’s 887 days – or 2.4 years. Researchers at Airtasker found that outside of London, those in the North East had to endure long waits the most, standing in line for 1hr 5mins-a-day.
The luckiest folk lived in the South West of England, where the average daily queuing time was just 26m. The study found that 31% of the 2,000 Brits polled said they would happily pay someone to queue up in their place.
Amazingly, such a job actually exists, with Airtasker finding more and more people happy to stump up dosh to get someone else to do their waiting for them. Just one ‘professional queuer’, 22-year-old AJ Hubbins, a design student from Salford has already earned £600 standing in line for other folk after advertising on Airtasker.
Among the ‘jobs’ he’s done include waiting overnight in queues to be ‘first in line’ for a Black Friday-type event, as well as queuing up for hours for to be the first for a ‘viral ‘beauty drop’ – where a new line in cosmetics is launched. He said demand was only likely to increase with Christmas coming up.
He said: “People just don’t have the time anymore. But through Airtasker, I’ve earnt £600 by queuing, including overnight, for store openings, pop up shops and beauty drops.
“Some see it as a chore. But for me it’s an easy way to earn while giving them some time back.”
Over the past two years, Airtasker has seen more than a 50% increase in tasks related to queuing, from concert ticket lines and limited-edition product launches to restaurant openings and retail drops. The place where we queue the most were found to be as follows;
1 – Supermarket – 54% 2 – Post office – 45% 3 – Traffic – 33% 4 – Airports – 32% 5 – Tube/train/bus – 22% 6 – Petrol Stations – 21% 7 – Concerts/music events – 20% 8 – Car parking spaces – 18% 9 – Bars/Pubs/Nightclubs – 16% 10 – Sports events – 15%
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