January 22nd, 2017 - by Robby Slaughter

Everybody hates waiting in line. It’s even worse after you’ve been on a long flight, cramped into the airplane, and you’re waiting for your bag.

An article in the The New York Times called Why Waiting in Line Is Torture tells the story of ongoing complaints from customers waiting for the luggage. And this is after they already added more baggage handlers and checked the equipment

Puzzled, the airport executives undertook a more careful, on-site analysis. They found that it took passengers a minute to walk from their arrival gates to baggage claim and seven more minutes to get their bags. Roughly 88 percent of their time, in other words, was spent standing around waiting for their bags. So the airport decided on a new approach: instead of reducing wait times, it moved the arrival gates away from the main terminal and routed bags to the outermost carousel. Passengers now had to walk six times longer to get their bags. Complaints dropped to near zero.

To get people to complain less, they actually made people walk farther. That’s some crazy thinking! Sometimes, failure is the secret to success. Keep that in mind next time you’re catching a flight!

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