This bear had a better time in line than Schweitzer did. (Photo: TBD Staff)

This year, I spent a lot of time waiting for things. I waited three hours to catch the Daily Show taping with President Obama, only to be turned away because it had reached capacity. I waited countless hours for various electronic music shows to begin (typical) and I spent a couple miserable hours in the cold while the National Christmas Tree lighting got underway. In every situation, I could have done something differently — arrived earlier, arrived later, or drank more alcohol — but the problem isn't just me; as the city grows, longer waits may just be a part of D.C.’s future.

Because of that, and not because of my frustration with standing in line, area businesses are doing all they can to improve the waiting experience.

David Moran, Managing Director at Old Ebbitt Grill, knows all about waiting. The restaurant in downtown Washington is one of the city’s oldest and most popular.

“We have a wait for tables every lunch and dinner here, and it ranges anywhere from ten to 15 minutes to an hour and a half,” Moran says. To make sure customers don’t get frustrated or bored, restaurant staff encourage them to dine at one of its four bars, with or without a pager that will beep when a table is ready. If a party begins to get bent out of shape, the staff might throw them a round of drinks. But in general, he says, controlled chaos can make an establishment seem more attractive. After all, an empty restaurant might be empty for a reason. “People like being in a very busy place where there’s action,” Moran says.

What about long-running, institutionalized events, where long waits were almost part of the fun? Two big ones were phased out this year. Both the White House Easter Egg Roll and Shakespeare Theatre’s Free for All, known for their long first-come-first-served lines, transitioned to online lottery systems in 2010.

Waits at grocery stores also came under fire. Along with a slew of other renovations, the Whole Foods grocery store on P Street NW completely revamped its express check-out system, adding more staff and gobs of new registers. Long check-out lines were decimated. The Trader Joe’s in Foggy Bottom takes another approach: plying customers with food. As lines grew longer, the store began handing out cookies to waiting customers. The gesture was so well-received, the staff started handing out cookies just for the hell of it.

"We do it all the time now,” says manager Perry Zettersten, the manager at the Foggy Bottom Trader Joe's. “We actually do it at the entrance now instead of having them roam around the store." Go to the store after 10 A.M., Zettersten told me, and there’s a good chance you’ll be handed a cookie. So is the cookie-distribution gig like being a greeter at Wal-Mart? "Kind of, except we throw a little food into the equation,” he says.

I checked with the Bethesda Trader Joe’s to see if they were hip to the cookie thing. “No, we don’t do that,” said a manager who'd only identify himself as Patrick. “But maybe we should.”