The Need to Queue

Regular readers of this blog (thanks, Dad) will know how much I hate queuing. Whether I hate queuing more than having Google constantly redirect me to the German website or translating everything into German is a close run thing.

Of course, your view on queuing might be completely different, and probably is. “How do you use your queuing time?” This could be a useful social study, and should rank alongside such important questions as “Do you love Marmite or do you hate it?” http://www.marmite.co.uk/

For some, queuing might be an opportunity to consider and reflect on the meaning of life, or to think over some particular crossword clue. Others might just reflect or think of nothing in particular. I like to engage others in conversation, especially on the subject of why this queue is not moving fast enough / not at all / why the other queue is moving faster / debating whether the person at the front of the queue is trying to buy the entire train etc. and asking myself whether it would be cost effective to actually just pay the bill of the person three in front of me.

It is conceivable that one should just relax, but that it not a core Grumpy skill.

Whichever it is, Starbucks have found a new way of separating us from our free time and in providing us with an opportunity to practice whatever it is that we practice, while we are queuing.

The idea here is to have one person taking the orders and the money and another making the coffee. The trick, though, in the “Let’s help people to practice queuing” training department is to have the person making the coffee not turn up / be on his coffee break /visiting the bathroom. This way queuing practice time can be maximised until the crucial coffee maker returns or just turns up.

I may have mentioned this in an earlier blog, but the Swiss think that the English like queuing. I explain that we do not like queuing. We are just good at it.

I have visited Poland and have concluded that they are good at queuing, at least in the city that I visited. My observations have led me further to think that a significant percentage enjoy it. The feeble evidence for this rash thought is from the local supermarket which has two exits, one at either end of the building. Each exit has its own checkouts. One exit always has longer queues with shoppers with more shopping. This is for the experienced queuers (is there such a word?), or for those who are practicing. The other is for people like me, who are lost causes in the queuing department.

Perhaps queues are a test, although exactly what sort of test, I have no idea. And who would set the test anyway? More to the point, who would mark the results? The EU should seriously consider having a “Queuing Directive”, to enforce this character enhancing habit.

I will continue with this rather unlikely theme. If we are bad in this world, are we destined to come back as someone whose only activity is to wait in an everlasting queue, which never moves?

 I remember a Russian friend of ours, who volunteered, some years ago, to queue for some tickets for an open-air cinema in Zurich. She arrived there at 5.00 am and collected the tickets at 8.00 am. “Wow”, we said. “That was some queuing”. “That’s not queuing”, she replied. “When you stand for twelve hours, you reach the front and the shop then tells you they are closing and you should come back tomorrow, that’s queuing.”

Well, I guess that puts Grumpy in his correct place.

(By the way, there is a “I hate Marmite” facebook page – I shall be lobbying for an “I hate queuing” page on Facebook – perhaps someone can help me to set one up.)