Standing in line has never been a popular activity, but today it seems that Americans are likely to be more impatient about waiting in line than they have been in 20 years. According to a recent Louis Harris survey, Americans’ leisure time has shrunk by 37 percent in the last two decades. With leisure time more valuable, the opportunity cost of waiting in lines is much higher.
Businesses recognize that people choose their products on the basis of the full opportunity cost, not just the price of the goods or service. By keeping customers waiting businesses may be losing customers. They are finding that people will choose one establishment over another because shorter lines. As a result, businesses are focusing on their marketing efforts on what marketers call time utility-providing products and services in ways that do not consume valuable time or providing values to offset the time losses. When the multiple-lines approach is used in banks and stores, people get frustrated because they often find themselves in the slowest line. Single lines do not move any quicker, but they reduce the variance of the wait and thus reduce frustrations. Customers can line up behind the teller or clerk or their choice; or in one line that allows the first person in line to go to the next available server-called a single-server line. As a result, most types of businesses in which several service people handle customers have switched to the single-server line.
Firms have tried several other approaches to dealing with lines. Chemical Bank began a program where any customer who had to wait in a teller line for more than seven minutes was given $ 5. Hospital emergency rooms in Los Gatos, California, now offer a “No Waiting” guarantee: If you wait longer than five minutes for emergency-room care, the billing department knocks 25 percent off your bill. The Manhattan Savings Bank offers live entertainment during noontime banking hours. Some hotels and office buildings have mirrors on their elevator doors in an attempt to distract people while waiting.
Sometimes just telling people how long they have to wait cheers them up. Disneyland has had to learn to comfort those in line, since a popular attraction like Star Tours can attract as many as 1, 800 people in a line. Like many amusement parks, Disneyland provided entertainment for those standing in line, but it also gives people updates, in the form of signs, noting “from this point, on the wait is 30 minutes' Distractions such as these can help people forget how they could be spending their time if they weren’t waiting in line.
1.Which is the best title for this essay?
2.What is the main idea of the entire essay?
3.People prefer single-server lines because（ ）.
4.We can infer from the essay that（ ）.
5.Which of the following statements is False?
