The queue: a crime against humanity

People queue outside the Department of Labour in Parade Street, Cape Town. Picture: David Ritchie

People queue outside the Department of Labour in Parade Street, Cape Town. Picture: David Ritchie

Published Feb 8, 2012

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I hate queues. But I realise they’re completely necessary in a Hobbesian sort of way. Somewhere along the line, Homo sapiens decided it wasn’t in anyone’s interest to beat one another over the head with rocks in competition for resources because, that way, no one got anything in the end.

What was better, thought our hairy predecessors, was to form a line and take turns to use things. Of course, though, there would be some basic rules.

“Jumping” the line wouldn’t be allowed and I imagine that culprits would have been thrown down volcanoes or fed to sabre-tooth tigers.

Also, from the outset, someone would have been appointed to administer this new system, which would later become known as the queue.

This individual was arguably the world’s first bureaucrat – an uptight, cold and uncompromising little critter with whom no one could reason.

However, unlike bureaucrats of modern-day South Africa, this caveman government worker would’ve been fairly competent. Had he been even a little like South African bureaucrats, Homo sapiens would’ve starved to death waiting in queues while he took endless tea breaks, smoke breaks and every other break you can think of.

Fast forward a few million years and queues are a normality just about anywhere, whether you’re at a bank in Manhattan or a UN feeding station in Somalia. The only thing differentiating one queue from another is the people who run them.

Visiting the vehicle licensing department this week, I also realised that the kinds of people you encounter while standing in queues can be quite varied.

Let me just say that sometimes you have to accept that some queues are going to be bad. It’s just the way the world works. Like queues at government offices, for instance.

Depending on whether you’re dealing with a bureaucrat who is a complete moron, a sadist with a power rush or someone who just hates their job, you can wait in a government queue for anything between three hours and three days.

The trick is to prepare yourself mentally before you visit a government office. Expect the worst, and that way you won’t be shocked when you spend half the day in a queue only to reach the front and be told you need to fill in a new form and rejoin the line.

Truth be told, your experience at a government office will never match that worst nightmare you imagined. But rest assured the staff will make every effort to make sure it comes pretty close.

Some people crack in queues. You can hear it happening around you – the sighs, the mutterings, the poorly disguised racial remarks and then, finally, the full-on public rant to the nearest official, who just stares back with a blank expression on her face.

Someone told me the other day that government queues have a tendency to bring out the worst in people. I tend to think it’s queues in general. Yeah, sure, order is required, but the fact is nobody likes waiting. No one wakes up in the morning and says, “Hey, I hope I get to stand in a long-ass queue today.”

While the queues at government departments are generally crimes against humanity, it’s not to say the private sector is without guilt. Incompetent idiots are everywhere.

You may not know it, but there is a floating trophy that exists which is awarded annually to institutions responsible for the worst queues in SA.

Below are some of the most frequent winners.

SOUTH AFRICA’S FIVE WORST QUEUES

Home Affairs:

These guys ought to adopt the slogan “You should’ve stayed at home.” If I had a dollar for every Home Affairs horror story I’ve heard, I’d be one rich SOB.

Everyone has experienced the sheer incompetence of a Home Affairs office at least once in their lives. The day you apply for your ID book is a rude awakening, particularly if you come from the orderly environment of a private or Model C school.

The Department of Home Affairs is either deliberately hiring the country’s most astonishingly doff people, or people are actually smarter than we think and are just playing doff, well aware of the anguish they’re causing with their laid-back, Jamaican style of administrative work.

In which case they’re sadists.

No one really knows what happens behind that partition where staffers routinely disappear for no particular reason. I always imagined there to be an in-house shebeen where they all just kick back until they’re ready to work again.

Cinema confectionery line:

Those who are too incompetent to work at Home Affairs usually end up at cinemas, working behind the popcorn counter during the busiest shifts.

Something tells me these guys are not aware they’re serving people who actually have somewhere to be. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that any rational person working behind a cinema confectionary counter who notices a three-mile queue, with the next movie starting in five minutes, ought to realise they need to pick up the pace a little.

But no, not this special bunch. In fact, they have a tendency to work slower when the queues are longer.

But let’s not place blame solely at their feet. The idiot who has been standing in the line for half-an-hour but only starts deciding what he wants once he gets to the front of the queue also deserves a moerse klap (a big slap).

Any KFC at mealtime:

This I cannot understand. Why should there ever be a queue at KFC? I mean, how hard can it be for these dummies? It’s simple: put the chicken in the box.

The 10 items or less queue at Pick n Pay/Checkers/just about any supermarket:

The biggest problem with so-called “express” or “10 items or less” queues is that 80 percent of the people in them have 11 items or more. It’s almost as if everyone suddenly forgot how to count.

And the people who are guilty of standing in that queue with more than 10 items know very well that it will take a very special kind of asshole to turn you away for having 13 items.

The other problem, of course, is that supermarkets tend to place the trainee on this particular till, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of the exercise. I don’t know whether it’s a sick supermarket joke or something.

University of KwaZulu-Natal registration line:

I’ve saved the best/worst for last. Let me just say, as a man who has stood in his fair share of queues across the world, you have simply not stood in a queue until you’ve experienced the sheer horror of the UKZN registration line.

This is the ultimate monster, the Leviathan. The whopper with cheese. It is to queues what the Eiffel Tower is to France – a national treasure. They ought to sell tickets to tourists and other people who are into torture.

People have died, given birth and met their life partners in this line, which can take weeks to conquer. The irony is that it’s a university, you know, a place where smart people train more smart people.

Little-known fact: Captured Taliban were given a choice of going to Guantanamo Bay or standing in the UKZN registration line. No points for guessing which they chose. - Sunday Tribune

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