The café is empty. You walk in, order, and turn around. Suddenly, five people are behind you.
Did you just summon a queue?
It gets weirder when it happens again at a different place. You start to wonder whether you are secretly the best marketing tool a small business has ever had. Before requesting a commission, consider three explanations.
1. One customer can make a shop look like a safer bet
An unfamiliar storefront gives passersby very little information. Is it any good? Is it even open? When somebody walks in, that question changes slightly: at least one person decided this place was worth trying.
A 2024 study by Breffni Noone and Michael Lin found that the mere presence of a wait line could make an unfamiliar service seem more popular, increasing expectations of its quality. It also found a limit: the positive impression weakened as the wait grew longer.
A short line can say, “People like this place.” A massive line says, “Hope you didn't have plans today.”
So yes, an existing line can influence a later customer's choice. That does not prove that you, personally, have a customer-attracting superpower.
2. You may simply be thirty seconds ahead of everyone else
Lunch breaks, train arrivals, the end of a movie, and the start of an evening rush all move people at roughly the same time.
Imagine arriving at 12:00. Five other people show up at 12:01. From your perspective, it looks like you attracted them. From the clock's perspective, everyone was just hungry.
Both things can happen together. An initial wave of customers arrives because of timing; the visible line then influences someone who was undecided. The line is a clue, not a magical magnet.
3. Your memory saves the highlight reel
“Five people joined right after me” is a good story. “Nothing happened after I ordered” is not. We remember the first kind of visit and forget the second.
This resembles a well-studied shortcut in human judgment: events that spring to mind easily can seem more common than they are. Tversky and Kahneman examined that mechanism in their classic 1973 paper.
If you keep only the successful queue-summoning stories, your win rate eventually looks unbeatable. Congratulations: you've invented a game that deletes your losses.
Want to test your powers?
Next time you visit a quiet shop, note the time, how many people were there, and how many arrived during the following three minutes. Record the boring zero-arrival visits too. Over several visits, compare similar times and locations rather than mixing a sleepy Tuesday with Saturday lunchtime.
This isn't a controlled scientific experiment, and it won't isolate every cause. But it can tell you whether the pattern happens more often than your memory suggests.
The answer: a queue really can influence another person's decision. But a personal “queue magnet” effect hasn't been demonstrated just because people show up behind you.
Shop: “Thanks for drawing a crowd!”
You: “I was literally just buying lunch.”
References (2)
- Noone, B. M., & Lin, M. S. (2024). Exploring the upside of waiting: The positive effects of waiting as a cue to brand popularity. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 118, 103691. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2024.103691
- Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1973). Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive Psychology, 5(2), 207–232. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(73)90033-9
