GENE COLLIER

Hate standing in lines? Consult Dr. Q.

Adding in the time you spend in traffic, experts say that in this lifetime you’ll spend one to two years waiting in line, and that does not even factor in when “all of our representatives are busy assisting other customers [at an excruciatingly deliberate pace],” which is nothing short of depressing, even after you understand that I only actually talked to one expert for this column.

Technically then, “experts” don’t say this necessarily, but Professor Richard Larson says it, over and over and over, in fact, so there probably is not a more widely quoted expert on the everyday annoyance of waiting your turn.

So accepted are the professor’s bona fides on waiting in line that he has anointed himself Dr. Q. in the smirking tradition of James Bond villainy, Q being short for queue, another word for a line in places where people tend to know a lot more words than they need.

Queuing up, or lining up for something, is yet another area of serious academic study in which you thought no one would possibly immerse themselves, and yet again, you’d be wrong about that. Lest you think this must be a tarted up one -credit time-waster at community college, well no.

Professor Larson works at MIT in operations research and analytics, which is probably best explained like this:

“I call operations research the world’s most important hidden profession,” Professor Larson said on the

phone from Boston this week. “No one’s ever heard of it or knows what they do, but if they call them ‘imagineers,’ ah, then they know what they do because they work at Disney.”

Professor Larson loves talking about queues, but hates waiting in lines, very much like me (except for the first part). He’s at least partially responsible for elevating Disney’s imagineers into the Queue Study Hall of Fame, crediting them with great advances in line management, line theory, expectations management, and discovering the formula for making you walk away happy even though you’ve just waited 45 minutes to ride the stupid Dumbo thing for two minutes.

He’s also exposed the evil genius of it all.

“Not only are they good at the physics of this, but they’re great at the psychology of the queuing,” Professor Larson said. “You go to a popular ride, Space Mountain or something, and you see the queue, but you can’t tell how long it is because they shield it from you; they’ve very clever that way. And the sign might say, if the line is out to here, you can expect an hour wait. But the thing is, that hour is really 45 minutes. It’s a Machiavellian trick.

“They get a married couple with two young children to think, ‘Well, maybe we don’t have to go to lunch right now. We could go through Space Mountain and then we’ll have a little delayed lunch.’ Meanwhile the kids are amused by everything on the walls because the kids think the amusement has started. Forty-five minutes later they’re getting on the ride and the husband says, ‘Hey honey, we’re 15 minutes ahead of schedule.’ That’s Machiavelli A plus-plus. They’ve made them happy waiting 45 minutes.”

Of course, you needn’t head for Florida and drop 10 to 20 grand to be susceptible to what the clinicians call “queue rage,” the dangerous area on the other side of a psychological trip wire that is specific to each individual.

Mine is most often approached in the 12 Items Or Less lane at Our Giant Eagle (not Your Giant Eagle; I don’t know what the hell is going on at Your Giant Eagle). Granted, Giant Eagle isn’t blessed with a roster of university-trained imagineers to manage and monitor the queue psychology, but that’s not what I’m thinking if someone is in front of me in the 12 Items Or Less lane with 13 Items Or More.

I’m thinking things like, “See, this is why I’m not a gun owner,” and “See, this is the kind of person who thinks a speed limit sign saying 45 really means 100, like Antonio Brown,” and “See, this person thinks 24 juice boxes equals one item, but he is still going to unload them one at a time and I swear when he puts the 10th one down I’m going to start counting out loud – 10! 11! – and I’m going to encourage the fine patrons behind me in line to join the count!”

Professor Larson correctly points out that many lines that bedeviled previous generations have been operationally managed out of existence, or nearly so. Long lines at the bank, the post office and at service stations have been reduced dramatically by research and technology.

With cellphone technology, plenty of people can not only survive patiently but flourish while standing in line. Depending on their individual digital acumen, it’s not impossible for some millennials to deposit a check, make a dinner reservation and buy a car without ever getting out of line at the food truck.

But there’s a downside, right?

“Everyone in front of me and everyone behind me has their head buried in their hand, looking at their iPhones,” Professor Larson said. “I find this depressing. They have the opportunity to introduce themselves to a fellow queue dweller, have a conversation about the weather or about the Pirates or the Red Sox or the Yankees, pass the time with human-to-human conversation, maybe even make a friend. If they’re single maybe even meet a romantic partner, who knows?”

Uh-huh. Hey, someone just posted a cat video. Gotta go.