Why Do Customers Leave a Queue?

By Ali Shahi | August 27, 2026
Four people standing one behind another at a wooden counter, all seen from behind with no faces visible, beside a card terminal and a plain concrete pillar

Across 1,673,247 emergency visits in New South Wales, how busy the department already was when someone arrived predicted whether they stayed. People arriving when the department was in its busiest fifth were “3.5 times more likely not to wait”. That is against those arriving at the quietest (Aust Health Rev, 2025). That is a condition…

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How Long Will Customers Wait Before Leaving?

By Ali Shahi | August 3, 2026
An empty metal shopping trolley standing alone on paving slabs beside a plain grey and dark metal wall, with nobody in sight

No published study measures how long a shop, café or salon customer waits before walking out. Leaving gets counted in hospitals and on phone lines, and almost nowhere else. So the honest answer has to be built from those places, and what they measure turns out not to be the same behaviour. Where leaving is…

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