A revolutionary idea: why not use a job queue system for your job queue?
Most people use delayed job aka a database or resque/sidekiq for queuing. But why hack your way around a database or a "smarter memcache" to do a simple queue when there are other solutions that were build for this?
Beanstalkd is one of them. It's small. It's fast. It's awesome. And I show you why.