We have been using beanstalkd with Laravel queues. We noticed significant performance issues on web requests on our webservers running these queues, even though little is actually being pushed through the queue itself. We noticed that the architecture of the laravel queue listener and work process is such that the listener persistently triggers workers even though there's no nothing on the queue. Is this intentional? Is there a downside to checking for items on the queue before launching the work process?

Also, it appears that the queue work process is somehow blocking the execution of web requests for brief periods of time. Are there shared resources for which queue work and web requests are competing for access?