At Portugal’s public-service centres, numbered tickets can make a queue less visible, but they have not eliminated the physical line that forms before a ticket is obtained. During field visits in 2023, the Portuguese Ombudsman recorded pre-opening queues of about 15 people in Faro, around 50 in Porto and more than 100 at the Saldanha Citizen Shop in Lisbon. At Saldanha, all 38 walk-in tickets for the social-security counter had been taken by 9:15 a.m. People were waiting to deal with public services gathered under one roof, including taxation, social security and civil registration. Their order began outside the building and was transferred to the ticket system after the doors opened. The ticket therefore did not abolish waiting; it converted a visible outdoor line into an indoor sequence of calls. Online tickets and appointments offer alternatives, but where same-day capacity is scarce, arriving early remains part of securing service. Portugal’s Citizen Shops reveal how digital waiting and embodied queueing can coexist as two stages of the same process: first a line for access, then a number for the counter.