Theory and Practice

Last Thursday was the 'Wake up Sid' premier at PVR - Forum Mall Koramangala.
(Twitter Review – ‘Nicely made, but the movie lacks soul’)
Since I reached early, went to Landmark & was about to make an 'impulsive buy' of Welcome To Advertising! Now, Get Lost
(Verdict – ‘Avoid’)
By now friends had come & were waiting at McDonald's in ground floor, to grab a quick bite.
7.45, 15 mins to go.
Quick glance at the long queue in the 2nd floor (single) counter & I made a dash to 3rd floor.
Multiple counters , around 10, a quick application of queuing theory, i.e. no of persons & no of items they were holding, how many were actual buyers & how many were just accompanying etc, bringing all my queuing theory basics to fore.
I picked a queue with 5 people ahead of me. On further analysis the credit card reader in the counter was working, & his processing time seemed to be lesser.
1st one was quickly done, since the uncle bought only eraser & pencil!
Satisfied with my choice, I decided not to change the queue. By now queues were growing too.
All the other queues seemed slower, for a change!
Again a call "just 10 minutes to go, where are you?"
By now the 4th one was also done & and the 3rd in the queue, a teenage girl holding only one book moved towards the counter. And the person in front me, carried only one book too.
Me "Am almost on my way", patting myself on the back for my judgment.
As I glanced ahead, a lady who looked like her mom, standing in next queue, passed 2 baskets full of stuff to be billed to the teenage girl standing at the counter!

"The difference between theory and practice in theory is much less than the difference between theory and practice in practice.” - Unknown

Update:- I had attributed the above quote to Randal L. Schwartz, who commented below “It's odd how that got attributed to me. I'm just quoting it from somebody's .sig I once saw.”