The Pandemic Could End Waiting in Line
On June 8, a crowd of maskless college students gathered outside Harper’s Restaurant and Brewpub in East Lansing, Michigan. Like other bars and restaurants in the United States, Harper’s had closed when the state imposed a shelter-at-home order in March. When the bar was allowed to reopen in June, at 50 percent capacity, fewer people could enter, and more had to wait. So the inevitable happened. The Brits call it a queue. Americans call it a line.
During the weeks that followed, Harper’s was linked to almost 200 COVID-19 cases, causing the brewpub to close its doors again temporarily. The owners had placed social-distancing markers on its stairs, but trying to get customers to comply on the public sidewalk proved challenging, they said in a statement.
Once a symbol of prestige (ever wait for hours to get into a club?), queues such as the one at Harper’s have become a symptom of the pandemic: hour-long lines wrapping around supermarkets. Students gearing up for remote learning, waiting in line to pick up equipment. Drive-through food banks with lines snaking for miles (and no end in sight). The election was already bound to produce bottlenecks, but in states such as Georgia, even early voting has brought hours-long lines as voters wait to cast their ballot, hoping they don’t catch the virus along the way.
[Read: An extinction event for America’s restaurants]
With social-distancing measures
