Do queues get to you?

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The weird thing is that when the queue is well managed you dont really mind how long you have to wait. Picture: Motshwari Mofokeng

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Auckland - I love a well-managed queue – the sort you find in airport immigration halls and at places like Disney World. These are equal opportunity lines. Once you join them your place in line is preserved. There’s no chance of a wide-eyed newbie feigning ignorance about how it all works and somehow getting ahead of you.

There’s something soothing about entering the roped-off zone and knowing beyond all doubt that you will arrive at the front of the line when it is your turn – not a moment before and not a moment after. The Americans are masters of the highly organised queue. You’ve got to love a nation that will even tell you the anticipated waiting time. “The wait for Splash Mountain is 45 minutes.” That’s awesome.

The weird thing is that when the queue is well managed you don’t really mind how long you have to wait. If you don’t have to defend your position from would-be interlopers, it’s almost a relaxing experience. On the other hand, having to stay alert for prospective queue-jumpers is stressful.

My recent experience in a shop was downright irritating. I understand the unwritten code in this store. While you wait for service at the counter, one should form a single line several steps back from the counter and roughly at its centre.

On this occasion there was one shop assistant serving a lone customer. There was also an assistant at another till, but she was working furiously on a computer.

Interpreting this as the international signal for I’m-far-too-busy-to-be-dealing-with-customers, I duly started the queue in the appropriate place – secure in the knowledge that I would be the next person to be served.

People standing in a long queue for applying jobs at Department of Water Affairs in Pretoria. Picture: Sarah Makoe

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But I hadn’t factored in the newly arrived gentleman who – ignoring the queue I had formed – waltzed straight up to the woman at the computer and started jovially recounting a story about what he’d just received for his 50th birthday and what assistance he now required.

I don’t know how people this unaware of their surroundings manage to cross a road safely. Whatever he received for his birthday – books? vouchers? – it clearly wasn’t good manners, consideration or emotional intelligence.

But it wasn’t entirely his fault. He had an accomplice in the woman who attended to him. She would have known about the informal queuing system there. She would have understood that someone slinking in from the side should not have precedence over those waiting for attention, yet she served him rather than gently advising him of how the system works.

To manage its multiple serving stations, that store needs a sign that reads “Queue here” and possibly a roped-off area. And it needs staff members who understand the obvious: that people who have been waiting should be served before those who do not have manners.

A story about queuing would not be complete without mentioning cinemas. I used to see a movie with a friend every Sunday and never once did we choose the right queue. We’d always get in the queue that moved at glacial speed. While other movie-goers were served quickly in the adjacent queue we were invariably stuck behind someone with significant and time-consuming issues.

To make matters worse, sometimes people behind us in the queue would be invited across to the other counter where a serving station had opened. What were we? Chopped liver? On one occasion, when I finally reached the front of the queue, the ticket seller closed his station and left without a word. It’s true. – New Zealand Herald

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