Um, I’m missing something. If a group of people are going to a movie together, and they get in different lines, why do the ones who happened to choose the slow line need to cut in with the people who picked the ‘right’ line at all? After all, they will sell a single person any number of tickets he wants to asks for.
Me, hubby, and two other couples go out together at least once a month, often to the movies. We specialize in divide and conquer tactics: two of the women get into separate lines for tickets, the other four proceed inside. The ‘ticket women’ keep an eye out for each other’s progress – when there is clearly a ‘winner’, the other gets out of her line, and the first woman buys six tickets.
Meanwhile, the two biggest of the guys have gone directly to the line of people waiting for admission to the theatre. The remaining two people head for the concession stand. They order enough junkfood for everyone, and almost always by the time they’ve been waited on and their orders assembled the ‘ticket’ women have come in and they can help carry the goodies away from the refreshment stands. Then we four (I’m always a ticket person – too small to be good in the scrum around the refreshment counte) go to the end of the ‘ticketed’ line. Our ‘seat guys,’ way ahead of the rest of us, can almost always score a stretch of six seats, and hold them long enough for the rest of us to catch up.
Simple, and not a single bit of ‘cutting in line’ required. All you need is people who can trust each other to settle up for tickets/goodies.
Hey! Maybe she’s bleeding internally! You don’t know! Maybe she just has to pick up these six or twelve or thirty-seven items on her way to the emergency room! Sheesh! Meanies.
I nearly died of astonished delight when I found that it is frequently the custom here for the cashier who is about to open a new register to go the first available person in an established line, say “I can help you on 12,” or wherever, and lead you to their checkout. It’s a bit of a free-for-all behind the Chosen One, but it sorts itself out pretty nicely and keeps tempers cool. Every place should do this.
I have personally embarrassed the Hawklette to near disintegration by savaging people who leap in front of newly opened cashiers at the theater or fast food joints when there is a huge long line already waiting. I wish to goodness the stupid place would leave or put the line stanchions out before they opened the window(s).
I’m pretty much anybody’s bitch in public, whether it be lines, or driving a car or whatever.
I had one of those A-ha! experiences in a bar that revealed to me the underlying rules that govern our universe one night.
Two guys were picking on a smaller nerdy looking guy. Nothing too serious. A slight verbal disagreement, not even shouting. From out of nowhere the nerdy guy whacks one of his adversaries with a bottle. The bottle breaks and essentially cuts the guy’s face in half. Blood everywhere. The guy had to be disfigured for life.
I have no idea what the dispute was about, but I’m sure that guy with the messed up face doesn’t think it was worth.
You never know what people will do.
You become something bad if you go around worrying about everybody else infringing upon your rights or wronging you.
In the great scheme of things these slights don’t matter.
As the son of a Recon Marine, my father’s friends were to a man true legitimate badasses. So was my Dad.
They had something in common with every other truly tough guy that I’ve known.
In public, they are always polite, undemonstrative, and self-effacing. In the things that don’t matter they are pussies. You can walk all over them.
Of course, then there’s the opposite, when you TRY to be nice and let someone cut in ahead of you, for a good and legitimate reason, and you’re stopped by the Idiots On Patrol.
Scene: Airport security line. I’m traveling on business and carrying a bag of recording equipment, mikes, cables, etc. I get pulled for the “special scrutiny” line. I have two hours to make my flight. No problem.
Behind me in the “special scrutiny” line: Couple just arrived on a cruise ship, flight leaving in 20 minutes, one small carry-on bag to be examined.
So I immediately offer to let them go ahead of me in line. And what do the Brilliant Security Dickheads say? “You can’t do that, we have to check people in the order they got into line.”
So they proceed to open my bag and examine EVERY piece of equipment separately, doing their little explosives check thing on EACH end of EVERY mike cable, etc., while managing to move at a pace where they would be outraced by even the slowest glacier.
I spent 45 minutes apologizing to that poor couple. The man finally went ahead to see if he could hold their flight; I just hope they made it. But at least they knew I TRIED.
Scene: every spring football tickets go on sale for the students at my alma mater. While I’m no longer a student there, I remember this happening all too well to me personally. We would go and camp out, literally, in line. We would be fifth or sixth in line. The rule is that anyone buying student tickets must have a student I.D. and can only buy 2 season tickets; that cuts out the possibility of anyone buying twenty at a time. What happened every time was that some yo-yo’s would come along and join their friends the next day after we’ve camped out. Even though we started out 5th or 6th, we wound up being fortieth or fiftieth because sooooo many people did it.