1. SELECT item_id WHERE expire = 0. If this is empty, no items are available.
2. UPDATE SET expire = some_future_time WHERE item_id = $selected_item_id AND expire = 0. Then check whether UPDATE affected any rows. If it did, item_id is yours. If not, loop. If the database has a sane optimizer it'll note at most one document needs locking as the primary id is given.
All this needs is a very weak property: document level atomic UPDATE which can return whether it changed anything. (How weak? MongoDB could do that in 2009.)
Source code at https://git.drupalcode.org/project/drupal/-/blob/9.2.x/core/... (We cooked this up for Drupal in 2009 but I am reasonably sure we didn't invent anything new.)
Of course, this is not the fastest job queue there is but it is quite often good enough.
For a queue, you need a table with an insertion order and a status indicator. “Primary id” is not enough because “primary id” may not be ordered (e.g., a UUID primary key is a primary id.)
OTOH, while a DB can do this, therr are plenty of well-tested open source purpose built message queueing solutions, so the swt of scenarios where “roll your own with a DB” isn’t a misuse of effort is limited.