Research on queuing and waiting has demonstrated how these practices exemplify tacit norms of social organization and how the dynamics of deference embedded in waiting (re)produce the status of the waiting individual and/or the power of individuals in charge of queues. Less attention has been given to the broader effects of the agentic efforts of individuals to decrease their wait times and increase their priority in their original queue, what I term the active management of waiting. Using ethnographic and interview data on IT support workers at a large university, I document how high-status individuals engage in three active management of waiting strategies: trumping the queue, circumventing the queue, and refusing to queue. As I show, these strategies are patterned by organizational status and thus not only (re)produce the status of the waiting individual but also exert a disciplinary effect on servers and help (re)produce organizational status structures as a whole.
AkerstromMalin. 1997. “Waiting: A Source of Hostile Interaction in an Emergency Clinic.” Qualitative Health Research7(4):504–20.
2.
AllonGadHananyEran. 2012. “Cutting in Line: Social Norms in Queues.” Management Science58(3):493–506.
3.
AuyeroJavier. 2012. Patients of the State: The Politics of Waiting in Argentina. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
4.
BoltonSharon C.HoulihanMaeve. 2010. “Bermuda Revisited? Management Power and Powerlessness in the Worker–Manager–Customer Triangle”. Work and Occupations37(3):378–403.
5.
BrownKennethKorczynskiMarek. 2010. “When Caring and Surveillance Technology Meet: Organizational Commitment and Discretionary Effort in Home Care Work”. Work and Occupations37(3):404–32.
6.
CharmazKathy. 2006. Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide through Qualitative Analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
7.
CollinsRandall. 2000. “Situational Stratification: A Micro-Macro Theory of Inequality.” Sociological Theory18(1):17–43.
8.
CzwartoszZbigniew. 1988. “On Queueing.” European Journal of Sociology29(1):3–11.
9.
DaltonMelville. 1959. Men Who Manage: Fusions of Feeling and Theory in Administration. New York: Wiley.
10.
EmersonRobert M.FretzRachel I.ShawLinda L.1995. Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
11.
FinlayWilliamMutranElizabeth J.ZeitlerRodney R.RandallChristina S.1990. “Queues and Care: How Medical Residents Organize Their Work in a Busy Clinic.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior31(3):292–305.
12.
GaspariniGiovanni. 1995. “On Waiting.” Time & Society4(1):29–45.
13.
GibsonDavid R.2008. “Doing Time in Space: Line-Joining Rules and Resultant Morphologies.” Sociological Forum23(2):207–33.
14.
Helweg-LarsenMarieLoMonacoBarbara L.2008. “Queuing among U2 Fans: Reactions to Social Norm Violations.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology38(9):2378–93.
15.
HochschildArlie Russell. 1983. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
16.
HughesDavid. 1989. “Paper and People: The Work of the Casualty Reception Clerk.” Sociology of Health & Illness11(4):382–408.
17.
HwangHokyuPowellWalter W.2009. “The Rationalization of Charity: The Influences of Professionalism in the Nonprofit Sector.” Administrative Science Quarterly54(2):268–98.
18.
KingWilliam R.2005. “Toward a Better Understanding of the Hierarchical Nature of Police Organizations: Conception and Measurement.” Journal of Criminal Justice33(1):97–109.
19.
Lara-MillánArmando. 2014. “Public Emergency Room Overcrowding in the Era of Mass Imprisonment.” American Sociological Review79(5):866–87.
20.
LarsonRichard C.1987. “Social Justice and the Psychology of Queueing.” Operations Research35(6):895–905.
21.
LeidnerRobin. 1993. Fast Food, Fast Talk: Service Work and the Routinization of Everyday Life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
22.
LopezSteven Henry. 2010. “Workers, Managers, and Customers: Triangles of Power in Work Communities.” Work and Occupations37(3):251–71.
23.
MannLeon. 1969. “Queue Culture: The Waiting Line as a Social System.” American Journal of Sociology75(3):340–54.
24.
McCammonHolly J.GriffinLarry J.2000. “Workers and their Customers and Clients: An Editorial Introduction.” Work and Occupations27(3):278–93.
25.
MilgramStanleyLibertyHilary J.ToledoRaymondWackenhutJoyce. 1986. “Response to Intrusion into Waiting Lines.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology51(4):683–89.
26.
NieWinter. 2000. “Waiting: Integrating Social and Psychological Perspectives in Operations Management.” Omega28(6):611–29.
27.
OrrJulian E.1996. Talking about Machines: An Ethnography of a Modern Job. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press.
28.
PopeCatherine. 1991. “Trouble in Store: Some Thoughts on the Management of Waiting Lists.” Sociology of Health & Illness13(2):193–212.
29.
RafaeliAnatBarronGregHaberKeren. 2002. “The Effects of Queue Structure on Attitudes.” Journal of Service Research5(2):125–39.
30.
ReddenShawna Malvini. 2012. “How Lines Organize Compulsory Interaction, Emotion Management, and ‘Emotional Taxes’: The Implications of Passenger Emotion and Expression in Airport Security Lines.” Management Communication Quarterly27(1):121–49.
31.
ReidMegan. 2013. “Social Policy, ‘Deservingness,’ and Sociotemporal Marginalization: Katrina Survivors and FEMA.” Sociological Forum28(4):742–63.
32.
RiveraLauren. 2010. “Status Distinctions in Interaction: Social Selection and Exclusion at an Elite Nightclub.” Qualitative Sociology33(3):229–55.
33.
RosenthalPatrice. 2004. “Management Control as an Employee Resource: The Case of Front-Line Service Workers.” Journal of Management Studies41(4):601–22.
34.
SchwartzBarry. 1975. Queuing and Waiting: Studies in the Social Organization of Access and Delay. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
35.
SeeleyJ. Lotus. 2019. “‘A Give Grief Kind of Guy’: Help-Seeking, Status, and the Experience of Helpers at a University IT Help Desk.” Symbolic Interaction42(1):127-150.
36.
ShermanRachel. 2007. Class Acts: Service and Inequality in Luxury Hotels. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
37.
StrathmannCynthia MikiHayM. Cameron. 2009. “Working the Waiting Room: Managing Fear, Hope, and Rage at the Clinic Gate.” Medical Anthropology28(3):212–34.
38.
WaltzMargaret. 2017. “Waiting on Others: Gender in the Medical Waiting Room.” Sociological Forum32(4):816–30.
39.
WardJennaMcMurrayRobert. 2011. “The Unspoken Work of General Practitioner Receptionists: A Re-Examination of Emotion Management in Primary Care.” Social Science & Medicine72(10):1583–87.
40.
WhiteHarrison C.2008. Identity and Control: How Social Formations Emerge. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
41.
ZerubavelEviatar. 1979. “Private Time and Public Time: The Temporal Structure of Social Accessibility and Professional Commitments.” Social Forces58(1):38–58.
42.
ZerubavelEviatar. 1987. “The Language of Time: Toward a Semiotics of Temporality.” The Sociological Quarterly28(3):343–56.
43.
ZhouRongrongSomanDilip. 2003. “Looking Back: Exploring the Psychology of Queuing and the Effect of the Number of People Behind.” Journal of Consumer Research29(4):517–30.
