I had not thought about this before the parent posted, but there is a difference between a line on the way in and a line on the way out. The first is attractive and the second is obnoxious. One of the reasons I love British pubs and Japanese ticket-machine restaurants is that you pay up front and when you are ready to go home you just leave.

Japanese convenience stores also get this right most of the time. There is almost never a line up at the cash register. As soon as one begins to form, the employees will drop whatever they are doing and open up a new register. At some places, the register can actually handle more than one customer at a time, so if you have someone fumbling for change, they can start tallying up goods for the next person in line.

Possibly I'm not typical, but I often spend a lot of time browsing in stores. As soon as I have decided that I'm done, though, I get very irritated at anything that slows me down. I had never really put my finger on it until reading the OP's post.

No. That went out decades ago. The Syufy chain of theaters (later Century) used to try to create lines by not opening up enough ticket windows. Then came video rental. Then came half-empty theaters.

Retailers no longer have the power to make customers wait. Consumers have too many other buying options.

You can have a line and good throughput at the same time. It's easy to develop a line. What you don't want is to have two espresso machines with three group heads each and two baristas just standing around because the counter is too slow.