the economy of waiting

Tuesday night I waited over 45 minutes to eat at Momofuku's Noodle Bar, highly acclaimed in the New York mag's cheap eats summer 2006 edition. Though my boyfriend was skeptical of the wait, I decided it had to be better eating at a random restaurant around 10th and 1st ave. Why else would people wait in line to eat there, duh. In terms of a review, I don't have anything to say that hasn't already been said on citysearch.com. More interesting is what I would like to call the economy of waiting. Have you ever noticed that you caught the very end of the rush and that all those people who came after you do not have to wait nearly as long as you did? Anyone on the list who came after we did at Momo's waited less than 45 minutes to eat. Meaning: the people in front of us all got seated and then the hostess stopped and the restaurant was booked. The next people to be seated (us ) had to wait and by the time a table came up for us, there were also tables for everyone behind us. We were the cut-off couple. Now clearly this relates to economies of scale. To produce 100 knickerbockers takes 10 days, 1000 knickerbockers 40 days, and 1,000,000 knickerbockers takes 350 days. The same rule albeit a little twisted applies to waiting in line. There becomes a point during waiting when the jam clears up, and #77 gets seated in significantly less time than #56. The best options are clearly to be either before #56 or after #56, and not the sucker #56.