The Economics of Queue Culture: Why I'll Never Line Up Four Hours for a Sandwich
There’s a photo doing the rounds showing a queue that snakes around a city block – hundreds of people apparently willing to surrender their Sunday morning for a sandwich. Not just any sandwich, mind you, but the opening day offerings from Sangaweech, where the first 500 were free. The line reportedly took four-plus hours to get through.
Four. Hours.
I’ll be honest, this kind of thing absolutely baffles me. I’m sure the sandwiches are perfectly good – artisanal bread, quality fillings, all that jazz – but I cannot for the life of me understand the mental calculus that leads someone to think “yes, this is worth a quarter of my waking day.”
Someone in the discussion made a point that really resonated with me. They calculate queuing time against their hourly wage – roughly $35 an hour in their case. A 20-minute queue equals about $10 of after-tax wages. It’s a simple but effective framework for thinking about opportunity cost. When you’re standing in that line for four hours, you’re essentially “spending” $140 of your time on a sandwich that probably retails for $17.
Now, before anyone accuses me of being a complete killjoy, I do get that there’s more to it than pure economics. Some folks in the thread made the case that it’s about “participating in a cultural moment” – being part of something, having a story to tell, hanging out with mates while you wait. Fair enough. We’ve all done silly things for the experience. I once spent an embarrassing amount of time troubleshooting a deployment issue at 2am because I was too stubborn to roll back, so I’m hardly one to judge how people spend their time.
But here’s where I start to struggle with the whole phenomenon: this isn’t a one-off thing anymore. We’ve seen this pattern repeat over and over in recent years. Krispy Kreme openings with hours-long drive-through queues. Lune croissants with 200 people lined up on Saturday mornings. That Rhode skincare launch where people camped overnight. It’s become almost performative, this willingness to queue for absurd lengths of time.
The truth is, most of this is driven by social media. Someone called it out perfectly – the majority just want to share their sandwich on TikTok or Instagram. The queue itself becomes content. “Look at this crazy line I stood in!” The sandwich is almost beside the point.
I’m reminded of when Krispy Kreme first arrived in Australia at Penrith, and people were treating boxes of donuts like they were Hermès Birkin bags. There were stories of people bringing them back from interstate like precious cargo. Pre-Instagram, sure, but the same psychology was at play – the cultural cachet of having the new, hyped thing.
What concerns me more, though, is what this says about how we value our own time. Someone mentioned their friends waiting five hours, then leaving without a sandwich because they had somewhere else to be. They were “close” to the front but it might have been another hour. Five hours! That’s longer than most people’s commute to work. It’s a full shift at many jobs. It’s enough time to cook a three-course meal from scratch, watch two films, or actually accomplish something meaningful.
I do wonder if there’s a generational thing at play here. When you’re in your twenties with fewer responsibilities, maybe spending half a day in a queue feels less costly. But at my age, with work commitments, a family, and the general weight of responsibilities, my free time feels incredibly precious. Every hour not working is an hour I could be spending with my daughter, tinkering with a home automation project, or simply enjoying the quiet with a good podcast.
The environmental angle bothers me too, though no one seems to talk about it. All those people driving into the city, idling in traffic, generating waste – and for what? A sandwich that’ll be available any day next week with zero wait. It’s such a perfect encapsulation of our instant gratification culture, our fear of missing out, our need to be seen doing the thing everyone else is doing.
That said, I don’t want to be entirely cynical about this. If people genuinely had fun in that queue, if they made connections with fellow sandwich enthusiasts, if they’ll look back on it as a quirky memory – well, who am I to say they wasted their time? Value is subjective. One person’s four-hour queue is another person’s meditation retreat or gaming marathon or weekend footy match.
But I can’t help thinking we’ve lost sight of something important. The best things in life – the ones actually worth queuing for, metaphorically speaking – don’t come with a hype cycle and an Instagram-worthy queue. They’re the quiet Sunday mornings, the conversations that go deep, the skills you develop over years, the relationships you nurture.
The sandwich will still be there next week, sans queue. Your Sunday morning won’t come back.
I reckon I’ll stick to making my own sandwiches. The ingredients cost about $8, it takes ten minutes, and I can enjoy them in my own kitchen while listening to a good history podcast. No queue required, and I’ve got my whole Sunday ahead of me.
Sometimes being boring is actually the smarter choice.