They take a ticket on their phone.
Your TV calls them up.

You don’t need a ticket machine. A dispenser costs money, runs out of paper, jams, and has to sit somewhere people will notice it. Starting from scratch, the QR code does its job and the ticket comes from the customer’s phone. For anyone without a phone, or who can’t get on with it, whoever is serving gives them a number from the dashboard with one tap, in the same queue and the same order.

And if you already have one, it still works. We don’t connect to it, but whoever is serving can create the queue with “No letter”, so the numbers look like the ones on the roll (8, 9, 10…), add the numbers handed out (“3, 4, 6, 10-15”) so they go up on the wall, and call any of them by typing it or tapping it in the list, in whatever order suits. QR tickets and paper ones can share the same queue. We don’t print tickets.

A call you hear, not just one you see. After the ding-dong the TV reads the call out, “Number A 14, Till 2”, with its browser’s own voice and in your account’s language, so the person buried in their phone looks up. If nobody comes, “Announce again” on the caller repeats it.

The waiting happens elsewhere. When a customer reads “6 ahead of you, about 15 min”, they can pop to the cashpoint or sit in the car, and they are back in time because the phone tells them. The waiting area empties, and nobody feels they are losing their morning stood by the door.

And whoever stays in the room watches your screen. They are waiting for their number, so they look up every few seconds. The queue has its strip and the rest is yours: this week’s offer, the service nobody knows you do, your bank holiday opening hours.

No compulsory details, and never a name on the screen. The number is enough: no account, no phone number, no email. If you’d like to call people by name, switch on “Ask for the name when taking a number” for that queue. The customer can type it or leave it blank; only the person serving sees it on the caller (“A-014 · Laura”), and it is deleted when the ticket is closed. The TV shows numbers, never names, and there is no customer list to protect.

To be straight with you: we don’t connect to dispensers such as Qmatic or read their numbers (paper tickets work because someone types them in), and we don’t print tickets. The phone alert only works with the page open (once the phone is locked, the browser stops listening), and iPhones don’t let a web page vibrate. Many TV browsers block sound until someone touches them: the TV then shows “Tap the screen to turn on sound”, and one tap or one press on the remote is enough, though it may ask again after the TV restarts. We haven’t tried every TV, so we can’t promise the voice on yours; the number flashes regardless. With the screen split, that TV’s time-based schedules stop showing, and the dashboard tells you so. And the estimated wait only shows once you have called a handful of people: with no data, we would rather not make a figure up. The QR on the TV only helps people who can see the screen: if it isn’t visible from the door, put the printed poster up as well.

They came in, did not see the machine, and sat down. Or they saw it and assumed it was for something else, or it was behind the door as they pushed it open. They have been waiting forty minutes and appear nowhere. And by the time it comes to light there is no clean way to place them: the person next up has waited less but holds a ticket, and whatever you decide at that moment, the whole room watches you decide it.

That mistake is not made by the people you picture. It is made by first-timers, by people who do not read easily, by someone who has just arrived from another country, and by those who can no longer make out the machine's little display. Which is to say, precisely the people a numbered queue ought to protect more than anyone. A badly signposted system does not distribute unfairly at random: it distributes against the same people, every day.

And a bigger sign does not fix it — putting it where people already look does. The machine or the QR poster sits by the door, and everybody walking into a place walks in looking at the far end, hunting for a person to ask; nobody walks in looking to their right. Having the screen that seated people actually watch say that a ticket is needed, with the QR code right there on the TV so they can take one without getting up, recovers that person after two minutes instead of after forty.

Straight with you: this does not solve it outright, and whoever is serving will still have to adjudicate the odd case. What changes is how many people end up in that situation, which is the part that can actually be brought down.