Just sell tickets to specific time blocks. Then people dont have to keep coming back to check what number you're on. <div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 2:05 PM, Peter Smith <<a href="mailto:psmith.gllug@gmail.com">psmith.gllug@gmail.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">I'm going to be down at the Trek premiere at the Detroit Science Center tonight, so I won't be back in town till well after midnight. There was talk of having a GLLUG P'con discussion on Saturday....but things I've read out here seem to imply that tonight is the only time that there's going to be chatter, so, I thought I'd add something from the after-hours bit on Sunday. I was handed a suggestion for how to handle the queuing problem we had, and encouraged not to reveal the source, so when it blew up in our faces, I'd get all the credit. :) All I can say is "Never set the cat on fire..." Anyhow...the idea was to number the tickets (not too hard) and then set it up with an airport boarding queue sort of thing. It took about 45 minutes for the first 28 servings (meat went down at ~5:05-5:10, by 5:25 meat was coming out, and the dealer's room cart went away about 5:45 or so), and then, what, another 5-6 hours for the remaining 400. Kay, so that's about 60 an hour. Call it 100/hr with enough people and just a touch more grill space, and go back to 400 people from 4pm to 8pm 4pm, start the grill, put up a sign, "Serving Ticket numbers 1 - 50 (as Beef is available)" . That gives you a queue of no more than 50 people, which is less than half what I counted at 5:15. You don't serve them in order of number, but you don't take anyone over 50. Send them to the back of the line if they WANT to queue up. 4:15, Serving begins 4:30, 25 people have been served. Bump the number to 1-75 (or 'less than 76' if you wish, whatever verbiage) 4:45, 50 people have been served. Bump the number to 1-100 5:00, 75 people have been served, Bump it up to 125.... If you're #300, you know not to come back till at least 6:00 and check the number. If it's close, great, get in line, we did better. If we're running slow, reestimate, and go do something else. IMHO, we'll do well with it as long as it's NOT 'a meal' for people who have to eat at a certain time. Yes, I've got opinions on bunches of other things too, but this was the only one that was given to me by someone else, and I wanted to be sure it was transferred. :) -- Peter Smith <a href="mailto:psmith.gllug@gmail.com">psmith.gllug@gmail.com</a> _______________________________________________ linux-user mailing list <a href="mailto:linux-user@egr.msu.edu">linux-user@egr.msu.edu</a> <a href="http://mailman.egr.msu.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux-user" target="_blank">http://mailman.egr.msu.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux-user</a> </blockquote></div>