What Is Occupied vs Unoccupied Waiting Time?

By Ali Shahi | August 9, 2026
A woman sitting alone on a bench against a plain stone wall, looking down at a phone in her hands, with a bin and a tall planter nearby

An illustrative scene. A tyre-fitting bay on a Saturday morning: six chairs, a coffee machine, and a wall-mounted screen playing the news with the sound off. Nobody looks up at it. It’s there because a wait with something in it is supposed to feel shorter than a wait with nothing in it. That idea has…

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Why Does Waiting Feel Longer Than It Is?

By Ali Shahi | July 31, 2026
Three empty moulded plastic seats on rusted steel frames against a pale blue-green wall, a single black seat set apart from two faded beige ones

In a 2023 study at a Chinese eye clinic, how long people thought they had waited predicted how satisfied they were. How long they actually waited had no direct effect (P = .365, Medicine (Baltimore), 2023). Two clocks run in every waiting room, and only one of them reached the survey. That split is the…

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