I'm at 962 HITS...sliding into 1000..so still new..bear with me, I'll probably ask a lot of dumb questions. I'm trying to figure out scripts right now. I tried to use HIT Scraper and totally panicked because I didn't know that the time would already be running out on some tasks before you got to them. I didn't have time to finish, so I panicked again, didn't know how to empty my queue and just clicked return on all of them. I'm assuming I didn't have to do all that..but I didn't know what to do. What if some of the HITS in your queue expire? When they are in your queue are you the only one who has access to do them?
If they're in your queue, it means they've been accepted, and the timer starts ticking. And yes, if there's only one of a hit available, and it ends up in your queue, you will be the only one with access to do them until it either expires or is returned (unless you complete them, at which point the task just ends)
The queue will always show things from least to most time, and you can normally work through things in that order alright, but it is good to keep an eye on your queue and make sure you don't have too much buildup.