In 2012, the New York Times suggested that Americans spend roughly 37 billion hours each year waiting in line (the same article referenced the sneaky way a Texas airport ended passengers’ complaints about long waits). There were 313.9 million people in the U.S. in 2012….that’d mean each American would have waited on lines for just shy of 118 hours (a little less than 5 full days) per year.
Going further back in time, in January 1989, the Los Angeles Times quoted an article from Family Circle that said the average American spends five years of their lives waiting in lines. Unfortunately, Family Circle went belly up in 2019, so we can’t really cross reference it really well (not that an article written sometime before January, 1989 would even BE easily found on the internet – the World Wide Web wasn’t even proposed until March, 1989, and didn’t get launched into the public domain until April, 1993, and I’m kind of doubting Family Circle publications from that time frame would be “out there” somewhere).
(By the way, 5 days per year times, let’s say, 75 years, would be 375 days of one’s life. Not exactly 5 years. But I digress.)
Anyway, when you think of waiting on lines for long periods of time, a few things come to mind…
When the earlier versions of iPhones were released.
PC: Robin Stott / Geograph.org.uk / this Creative Commons License
Theme parks (Hello, Halloween Horror Nights).
PC: Jeremy Thompson / flickr / this Creative Commons License
And, yes, the bane of existence, queues at the TSA checkpoint.
Of course, plenty of places will help you save time and skip the queues. For a phone release nowadays, you can just get it mailed to your house. Theme parks will happily offer to sell you passes that let you skip the line. FastPass. Express Pass. Blast Pass. And for the TSA queue, which can sometimes be upwards of 60+ minutes, you can get TSA PreCheck.
Joe and I have preached the joys of TSA PreCheck for years. It’s more convenient than the regular line because you don’t have to take off your shoes or belt, or remove items from your bags. It’s also MUCH faster than the typical queue (although they’re apparently playing with the numbers now).
Still, some people say they’d just as soon not get TSA PreCheck.
- Some don’t fly enough to warrant spending the money
- $78 per person is a lot of money for some people, epecially if you’re talking about 2 parents and however many kids in the family are older teens or even in their 20s and still living at home
- Some just don’t like the idea of being vetted by the government to ensure you’re a trusted traveler
All of those reasons are absolutely valid.
But a woman named Lindsy Davigeadono recently posted on Instagram why she personally has no interest in getting PreCheck. Although it’s a reason I had never heard of before, it makes 100% sense.
Apparently her husband has PreCheck. Their 4 kids don’t need to; they can go on the PreCheck line, for free, with their dad. And Lindsy? She gets to have some peace and quiet, for a change.
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