This is the hardest 20 minutes of any estate sale. Here's a protocol that works.
Door protocol: what happens at T-30
- Set up the line visualization. "The digital queue starts at position 1, which is who you are at door." Say it out loud.
- One staff person on the line tool — not on the register, not roaming.
- Have another person advance-only if you're over 100 registrations, so one person can answer questions while the other advances.
- Walk the line and confirm the QR code is visible both before and after the entry line starts — from the street. Your QR code is the point of last-second registrations; if nobody can see it, nothing works.
The first-15-minutes script
If you are staff, you will be asked, verbatim: "Why can't I just walk in?" The answer that works: "You can! You're in line behind X people who reserved digitally. Here's the situation." If a shopper took a spot online, that's it — no arguing. Honesty, fairness, and a smile go a long way.
At open
- Advance as capacity frees. Panicked advancing and you blow the max, and then there's a wall of humans in the living room.
- Call out classifications for the people registered but not yet checked in: "If you're #1 through #15, you're cleared to enter on arrival."
- Take photos of the queue front — good history for companies building regional presence.
What a line tool changes vs a clipboard
One: nobody is writing numbers on hands. Two: auto-backfill handles no-shows automatically — trust the tool and don't try to circumvent it. Three: the numbers on screen are visible to shoppers while they wait, which kills the argument "that's not the real order."
Equipment
Two staff phones, one clipboard for offline names, one yard-sign QR pointing at the sale page from 15 feet out. Done.