What "Priority" Means at 3 AM
A priority queue is a contract about who is allowed to suffer — not a sort order.
At 3 AM, the dashboard shows 4,812 jobs queued. A "low-priority" batch sits at the head. A priority-9 user request waits 312 slots behind it. The on-call engineer sees the same mistake she has fixed a hundred times: every job is marked high-priority, so the queue has collapsed into FIFO.
A priority field is not a priority system. A real one needs three things: bounded levels, an SLO per level, and a punishment for lying. Without an SLO, "high priority" is a wish. Without punishment, every caller claims the top tier — because the cost of lying is zero.
FIFO is the honest default: fair, slow, impossible to game. Add priority and you add a contract. Honor it — or remove the field.