Alas, this post suffers from mathematician syndrome ("first, assume cows are spherical..."). Actual buffet queues can't be modeled like this; because of the physical constraints, they should be modeled as particle flows and hence take into account that one person cannot occupy the same space as another, and the overhead of routing, blocking etc.
While I agree that the 'default' buffet queue is inefficient, I don't agree with the proposed methodology of finding an improvement.
(also, I missed a literature study - there is so so so much research on this already)
While I agree that the 'default' buffet queue is inefficient, I don't agree with the proposed methodology of finding an improvement.
(also, I missed a literature study - there is so so so much research on this already)