I’m not well-travelled enough to know about this, but I have noticed something else sort of similar. I work at a dining hall on my campus. Students work part-time, but almost all the full-timers are immigrants, many of whom don’t speak English. I’ve noticed they don’t seem to have any concern about personal space. I was working in the dishroom on the line one night, and one of the ladies, of some sort of spanish decent (no one really knows much about her, because she speaks some sort of spanish slang and mumbles a lot) would always come and stand right ON TOP of me and try to work, even though that meant shoving me into a trashcan. She had five feet on the other side of her to stand and work efficiently. And a lot of the other employees will basically just stand right on you to try and talk/communicate with you. My instinct is to take a step back, but none of them seem to notice they are standing on me.
Generally, bringing your knee up sharply to about crotch level will make them notice this. And remember, too!
I used to frequent mosh pits at punk rock shows in my youth, and I’m a fairly big guy as an adult. Guess I’m all set.
Well said.
Also, it’s not necessarily “less efficient” to do it their way. As long as someone is always getting served, they’re going to service the same amount of people in the same amount of time, whether it’s from a scrum or a line.
It’s also our system in really crowded bars. No one stands in line. . .you just sort of work your way to the front.
Re: ski lift lines in Austrai-I was waiting my turn 9like a good American0, when this jerk cuts in front of me. I tapped him on the shoulder, and when he turned around, i decked him! The guy was startled-but i noticed nobody tried it again!
My wife and I noted this throughout Europe (Greece was awful about lines). When I came back to the U.S. and asked a German coworker, she said, “We have a word for people who wait in lines: Americans.”
I think I’m pretty good at queing and never cut in line, but the Brits had to correct me. I was in a small grocery store, and there were 3 checkers. So I stood in line behind one of them, the one I thought would be done next. No! The checker looks at me and says, “Sorry, there’s a que” and points to a long que near the first checker. They line up there and go to the next open checker. Then they all filter out from that one spot. I guess it makes queues easier, and the Brits would know. I prefer that myself, less stress over which of the 3 lines to choose.
So I wonder if other cultures that don’t really do the whole queuing up thing look at the British and Americans as kind of silly for doing it?
We have single-line, multiple register set-ups over here, too; even in places where there is no rope to officiate them.
I think that’s my favorite setup. That way you don’t get rogue lines that seem to never get emptied because one cashier is slower than the rest. That’s the line I always manage to pick by the way. 
Well-- immigrants would tend to conform to the prevailing cultural mores of their adopted country, and it’s not unheard-of for them to adopt a few behaviors in their own immigrant ethnic groups.
Americans can be real uptight about sweaty body odors. Lots of immigrants don’t care unless they’re around a bunch of Americans.
I’ve never noticed a cultural difference (since I’ve never been outside the USA/Canada and don’t have much experience in immigrant neighborhoods), but one constant I’ve tended to notice here in the US is that older people, especially women, have no problem cutting in front of much younger people. Almost every time someone elbows in front of me, it turns out to be a blue-hair.
When in Rome and all that, but I do think the no-line system disadvantages quiet and non-wave-making people and so I tend to oppose it. Any place where I have to punch a dude to get waited on doesn’t sound like a place where I’d want to set down roots. I’ll admit, this is the first time I’ve ever heard that waiting in line isn’t common for everyone, I thought lines were something universal.
Right. You get them at my post office and the airport with the rope.
Then, there are some places where they kind of arise naturally. At my video store, there are two registers. If they’re both being waited on, a person will usually stand 2-3 feet back in the middle. The line forms there and the head of the line gets the next available register.
Good system.
(and Big Cheese, it’s queue, not que. queueing is an example of a word with 5 consecutive vowels. Unless there’s another form I’m unaware of – always a possibility.)
[hijack]
I’ll start this off by saying that my husband works in a prison.
We were at Niagra Falls a few years ago, in that tunnel which has a porthole so you can look at the underside of the falls. It was very crowded and noisy-- sheer chaos, really. We got in what appeared to be a line, but were being passed all around by other people. I’m short-- I was being crowded out and couldn’t see. The same thing was happening to the other women, who weren’t bold enough to push themselves forward. We all looked at each other in our shared helplessness.
“YOU!” Hubby bellowed above the din. “YOU! YOU! AND YOU! GET IN LINE AND WAIT YOUR TURN!” His booming voice echoed off the rock walls.
Even though some were obviously from other countries, they all recognized the Voice of Authority when they heard it. They instantly flew to the wall in an orderly line, as if they were made of metal and the wall was a magnet. The room fell silent, everyone stepping foward obediently when their turns came. No one looked at us. We waited our turn, looked out the porthole, and when we left, everyone was still waiting patiently in orderly fashion.
I always title this story When Hubby Treated Tourists like Inmates.
[/hijack]
The reason Americans line up the way we do is that we’ve been programmed since kindergarten to Respect The Line. It’s so deeply engrained in us that we get offended when someone ignores what seems to us to be the natural order of things.
India was the worst. In the large cities there were special offices where foreigners could go to get the Tourist Quota Tickets for the trains, but in the smaller cities and towns it was a free-for-all at the ticket windows. There were 2 railings that led up to each window, but just before the window, the railings ended. This is done, of course, so people can leave once they’ve bought their tickets, but this is where the chaos was.
Being a male at 6 feet and 165 pounds, I had no trouble pushing to the front, but I often saw several female travelers getting nowhere fast. Imagine 20 or 30 people all crowding around one window! And the weird thing was the no one appeared upset that I had pushed to get up to the front of the line. I never knocked anyone down. You just had to tuck your elbows in and squeeze by the people in front of you.
Believe me I tried to wait in line politely like I would do in the US, but it just doesn’t work that way in India.
Ah, but there is a certain raw Darwinist gratification about making your way to the front and getting served ahead of everyone else due to your own aggressiveness that just can’t be obtained by standing in an American line and waiting around like a poor sheep.
sighs wistfully thinking about Mexico City
China (and I expect India) are extremely large, densely populated countries, where if you wait you just might wait a lifetime. Survival of the fittest in this cultural context. That said, at least in China, there is usually a method to the madness that one can get attuned to.
Heh. There are so many subtle inflections that can be applied to the word “mate”, ranging from friendly admonition to an outright declaration that physical violence is about to ensue.
The weirdest queueing I found - and I’ve travelled extensively in South-East Asia, where the devil really will take the hindmost - was in Japan. It’s like they’ve never actually seen queueing, but have only heard it described: in a convenience store, you’ll get three separate lines at the register - imagine a “T”, with each line separate but converving on the intersection.
My ex was a Peace Corps Volunteer in a rural area in the Philippines. There were at least two buses per day that made round trips to the nearest large market place. People boarded with their wares, live chickens, wood carvings, etc., and pandemonium ensued as they all tried to board the bus at the same time.
Little boys, about eight or nine years old, would scout out the foreigners (usually PCVs and Mormon missionaries) and for a few pesos would go through a window, reserving a seat for the foreigner. The ex would eventually make it to the seat that the boy held, pay him, and gently lift him out the window.
Windows were always open, BTW, as there was no air conditioning.
Haha, I love it! Little capitalists at their finest.