cultures in which people don't line up

Factual Questions
21

The world-famous cable cars of San Francisco were once upon a time the scene of mad scrambling. People (tourists and locals alike) gathered around the platforms in great crowds. When the cable car arrived, everyone was very good about standing back while passengers got off (this took place while the car was still on the turntable). Then the conductor and driver manually pushed the car off the platform.

As soon as that was done, the gathered crowds madly stampeded to board the car.

This mad stampede to board the cable cars, it seemed, was an honored and highly treasured San Francisco institution.

Also, passengers paid their fare after they boarded. The conductor walked through the aisle, collecting fare from anyone he could reach, including passengers sitting on the outboard seats if he could get to them. I always thought it was kind of hit-or-miss who paid and who didn’t.

But all that died abruptly in the mid-1970’s, when the city shut down the entire cable car system for a year or so for a massive renovation. When they re-opened:

(1) There were cordons surrounding the platforms, forcing people to line up in a neat line :eek:

(2) There was a ticket machine nearby, where passengers were supposed to buy tickets before boarding. :eek: So much for that cherished tradition.

(3) There are perennial entrepreneurs hanging around, offering to “assist” passengers in purchasing their tickets from said machines. :eek:

The entire gestalt of riding the cable cars just isn’t like it was anymore. It was like the passing of an era. The Third Age of cable cars came to an end, and the sedate and orderly Fourth Age began. What a shame.

Anecdote: Back in the late lamented Third Age of San Francisco Cable Cars, I boarded once at Fisherman’s Wharf. From there, the car goes directly up one of those famously steep hills. Another guy boarded with a HUGE dog on a leash – An Irish Wolfhound, IIRC, a breed which could be saddled and ridden like a horse.(*)

When the car got going, the dog galloped alongside the car all the way up that hill. All the other passengers gawked and/or took pictures. The guy with the dog explained: That’s how his dog got his exercise.

You can’t do that anymore.

(*) ETA: Srsly. The first time I ever saw an Irish Wolfhound, I didn’t even immediately recognize it as being a dog. I couldn’t tell it was a dog or a smallish horse. Really.

22

It is a commonly-heard argument in the United States that our public elementary schools are going to shit: No longer teaching cursive writing; no more little kiddies memorizing their times tables; etc.

But it always seemed to me that public elementary schools were also all about indoctrinating impressionable young minds in the skills of good citizenship: No running on the playground; don’t litter; and wait in line at the drinking fountains!

The kindergarten rooms also had bathrooms in the room, and if necessary, one had to wait in line to use those too.

Are these basic “citizenship skills” still being taught at the lower elementary school grades? Or is that all falling by the wayside? Is our kids learning that? Are children still being taught to wait in line for just about everything?

We even had to wait in line just to enter the classroom every morning, after recess, and after lunch. We all had to line up outside the room until the teacher deigned to open the door and let us in, and then we were supposed to file in all polite and orderly. ETA: We had to make two separate lines: The boys and girls always lined up in two separate parallel lines.

Today, when I see drivers cutting into traffic (like, entering a freeway at an on-ramp during rush hour and refusing to zipper-merge), I always think: There’s someone who never learned to wait in line at the drinking fountain when he was in kindergarten. And the appropriate punishment should be to have to spend some number of weeks sitting in a kindergarten class, learning to wait in line. Same for litterbugs.

23

You had bathrooms in your classrooms? Like, a shitter against the wall before God and the class? A stall? Or just a sort of en suite arrangement?

24

It’s a common arrangement in Kindergarten classrooms to have an en suite situation or even just a high wall between the bathroom and classroom. Some kids still need some supervision at that age.

25

Many years ago I traveled to England. When I got off at the airport there was a line (or queue) for taxis. The Brits formed the neatest most polite line I’d ever seen. No one stood too close to the person in front and when the line stretched past where the crosswalk (zebra crossing) met the sidewalk, the line gapped taking up on the other side.

I went from there to Stockholm, Sweden, where the “line” to board the ferry to Denmark was about the most unruly I’d ever seen. American lines fit that in that wide gap. Actually at more and more places in the US I’ve seen one line form for multiple servers. This is true at both local Panera Bread restaurants, Brueger’s bagels, and Barnes and Noble bookstore even though the counter is open and could support multiple lines. (I guess only partially open at B&N).

A few grocery stores used to have this organized with a roped off waiting area where you go to the next server. (They did have a separate express line for just a few items.) But that seems to have stopped at all of them.

26

Anecdote : my Chinese teacher told us that, in the run up to the Olympic games in Beijing, there was a big government push to teach people the basics of a queue in order to not appear uncouth to Western tourists - so for a few months at every bus stop, Mickey Dees and so on they appointed retired grandmothers with hand-held signs and whistles to monitor queues and explain to people that no, no, shoving and cutting were Not Done any more.
She also explained that as soon as the OGs were over, all that shit flew right back out the window :smiley:

Then again, the art of subverting a queue is also a survival skill in France, so maybe I shouldn’t be so glib :o

27

Israelis will wait in line, but they don’t like to be seen standing in line, if you know what I mean. You’ll see a bunch of Israelis milling around in front of the counter or booth, without actually touching each other, and though it’ll look like total chaos, everyone there will know what order they’re in, often by showing up and asking “Who’s last?”. Of course, the system isn’t perfect, so you’ll often have little altercations (“Hey, it’s my turn” “I was here first!” “No you weren’t”) that are resolved by force of personality, majority bystander vote, or the judgment of the person behind the counter, who is naturally the final arbitrator on whose turn it is.

28

Interesting point about that kindergarden thing: there was a deliberate movement to get rid of queing in schools, because it was recognised as being a kind of mind-control thing to make people into obedient citizens.

The other half of it was that for a long time teachers were taught that everything the 19th century learned about teaching was wrong: Kids should “learn”, not be “taught”. This mode of thinking influences their attitude to all aspects of classroom activity.

My kid has just started school, and he mobs through the door and mills around inside the entrance. The teacher likes it better that way, and the school admin likes it that way.

Regarding shops: milling around at the counter in Israel allows out-of-order service depending on status. Typically, kids first. Unlike Melbourne, where status requires kids-last service.

We had a strong queing culture which was cultivated by our public transport system. People queued to enter Trams, because the trams and roads were designed in a way that made queing the obvious method. You could have mobbed the door, if you wanted to take the long way around, get run down by a car, and get in last.

A new design of the Tram vehicles killed that. A consequence was that they had to build more road safety zones, to hold the milling crowd that was waiting to enter.

And now have a very multi-cultural city anyway. Still, in general, apart from trams and older chinese migrants, queued service is expected.

29

In southern California cutting in line will almost certainly lead to a confrontation. I live in the Los Angeles area and it is not tolerated here as far as I can tell.

30

I was in line at the Post Office waiting for them to open the doors. I was first in line (waited a whole 6 minutes). 15 people behind me.

They unlock the door, and this one person darts past us all, under the ropes, and proudly beams as First In Line. Obviously not familiar with the finer point of life here.

Uh, no. The crowd basically banished her to the back of the line with ugly stares and shakes of heads.

31

In my (limited) experience, the best queuers are the Japanese. On railway platforms (including subways and the Shinkansen), where the doors on the train stop is marked on the platform, and everyone lines up for where their door will be, the steps aside a little to let people off before they get on. This is even in rush hour in the big cities like Tokyo and Osaka, when the trains are packed full.

And, in a small country town, when I stood next to the bus stop about 15 minutes before the bus was due to go, people just lined up next to me. When the bus came, I headed for the front door, when the rest headed for the back door – and when I realised my mistake, they happily let me get in the back door ahead of the rest of them.

32

This really is true, the British love of queuing is no myth. It was one of the things I found the most charming during my time in the UK. It’s not just that you’re good at it, it’s the way you seem to enjoy it so much. Like how queuing at the checkout at the supermarket comes with those extra little bits of pomp and circumstance. The little bell and the cheerful voice that goes: “Cashier number four, please! Cashier number five, please!” The winding little paths that your queues sometimes take in shops, for no apparent reason. I assume it adds to the fun.

A Swedish queue, by contrast, is a utilitarian device. It’s there to move people through a point in space in an efficient manner. Swedes will queue up with the best of them, sure, but they won’t particularly enjoy it. Only the Brits would think of making it the highlight of their shopping experience.

There’s also a particularly British sensitivity to what constitutes a queue. Apparently, it’s not just about straight lines, there’s a subtlety to it. At times I would barge past what I thought was a randomly assembled group of people, only to have someone pipe up, “Excuse me, there’s a queue!” (never in an angry tone, I should mention, but rather nervous or slightly panicked, as if there was a balance in the fabric of existence that had been upset and needed to be put back in order.) And, yes, upon closer inspection I was able to discern a snaking pattern of lined up Brits, but it certainly wasn’t obvious to me at first sight. Although, to a Brit, of course, it would be.

33

I was going to mention something similar. I think the tolerance with line-cutting has much to do with the in-tolerance to scolding a stranger (and yes, I know there are other times when we have no trouble doing that).

Aside from lines and scrums, there is also the concept of turns, which many people from queuing cultures appear to be extremely confused by. You get to a place where, if the geometry allowed it, there might be a line. But there isn’t. If there is a ticket machine, you take a ticket with your number; if there isn’t, you ask “who’s last” or count heads. I’ve seen this in many Western European countries, including the aforementioned Sweden, Italy and Germany.

Recently I was at one of the tourism information booths in Barcelona to buy some tickets. There were a bunch of people there, mostly Spanish-speaking, some Chinese, some Japanese, a German-speaking family, following the “who’s last” method as it’s just impossible to line up there without cutting up traffic. These two English-speaking girls saw what they probably mistook for a scrum, cut in front and were drily informed by the guy in the booth that “there is a line, you go to the end of it”. They looked around, surprised, into a couple dozen grins and fingers pointing to a space near the person waving that he was last. That was unusual in the amount of nationalities involved and in the guy telling them off, but in stores I see English-speaking tourists not following the “who’s last” rule quite frequently. I think it’s just they’re not used to it, as it doesn’t seem common in English-speaking countries.

34

Lol this is funny to me because I’m Nigerian and orderly lines are pretty much unheard of over there and experiencing shortages has come to be a way of life for us, so, sounds legit.

35

A ferry from Stockholm to Denmark? Did such a thing ever exist?

36

Nah, the mad scramble just means those who can move fastest get there quickest.

Case in point: London. London is different to the rest of the UK when it comes to queuing. We still queue at the post office, supermarket, most places in fact, but we don’t queue for public transport. This is partly because there are very frequent buses and tubes, so it’s not as big a deal, and partly because the majority of people getting on the bus or tube are not from the UK, esp in central London tourist areas. (Note: I’m happy that most people in central London tourist areas are not from the UK - it’s a good sign economically).

So if you have a mobility issue you get on the tube or bus last and are the least likely to get a seat. If you wait for the next bus or tube, the same thing happens. Queuing would be far better but we’re too far gone now.

If there’s an orderly queue and you really do have a good reason to go to the front of the line you can ask if you can queue-jump. I’ve seen people ask many times and they’ve never been refused as long as they were polite and gave a good reason.

37

Seconded. In free-for-all situations the pushiness is not related to need IME. I’ve certainly seen people scramble to the front to buy some complex, multi-stop ticket for next summer.

38

I would be inclined to doubt the author’s theory about China’s non-queuing, the- weak-go-to-the-wall, way of doing things, being the result of hardship under Communism: I find some indication that these habits are older in the culture of China, than the past 6 -7 decades. I recall written observations by Peter Fleming (less-famous brother of the “James Bond” author), who was a travel writer: in recounting his travels “out east” between the World Wars, he made some comparisons between the Russians, and the Chinese – both of which peoples he knew and, on the whole, liked. In Fleming’s view, both nations had much experience of being beset by shortages, overcrowding, and conditions at least verging on the chaotic. He found that in the main, the Russians coped with these difficulties in a disciplined and relatively mutually considerate way; whereas with the Chinese, it was “every man for himself”.

The Soviet Union was, of course, long notorious as the queueing-est place on earth: anything desirable, was in short supply and had to be queued for, and the citizenry spent much time in (usually docile and well-self-regulated) queues. There’s the hoary old tale of the citizen of Moscow who comes to feel that the frustrations of Soviet life have become unbearable – he decides to assassinate Brezhnev. He accordingly shows up at the Kremlin and states his business: whereupon the KGB man directs him to the end of a hugely long queue, which he has failed to notice. He duly takes his place as number 700 or so, in a queue of people all on the same mission as himself.

39

Do you refer to the situation of a party joining the one of their number who has held their place in the queue? That’s pretty standard queuing etiquette in Germany (is it not in the UK?), and the people behind may be put out a bit but don’t consider the group having jumped the queue.

40

Those winding paths through the shop are the same winding path almost every time too. If you really want to irritate us Brits, just make the queue go in a different direction than it normally does. It will confuse everyone, but no one will say anything :smiley: