Since the Queen died, I’ve heard a lot of Britons joking about the importance of queing in their culture. One guy even said that the 30-hour queue to pay respects at her coffin was the Most British Thing To Ever Happen. Similarly, a couple of decades ago, such a joke came up in the (terrible) Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy movie: a character said, “I’m British, I know how to queue.”
I’m American, and I know how to queue, too. Been doing it all my life. Sometimes I think elementary school was one giant queue (or line, as we call them, but never mind that). Line up for lunch, line up for this, line up for that. As an adult, I do it at the bank, at the airport, at the grocery store, at the drivers-license renewal facility, at the theme park.
I don’t get why the British lean into this so much. Do you guys spend more of your lives queing than you otherwise should (like are bank employees known for taking their sweet-ass time or something)? Are your government services understaffed, causing longer waits?
I think standing in line is more common in the UK, and British people, in general, are more patient since they are used to waiting in a queue for just about everything.
It’s a hangover from WW2 and the austerity/rationing period that continued for some years thereafter * -another example of the “Britain can take it” mood. But there’s also a sort of fetishisation of more recent queues - for Wimbledon tennis, for the cheap standing tickets for the BBC Proms -and any occasion that leads some loon to start queueing 24 hours in advance.
*There was a cartoon from that time that showed a line of puzzled-looking people and a man saying"Well, if you’re waitiing for Gone With The Wind, she’s waiting for her cat’s meat ration and I’m waiting for a No.9 bus, what kind of a queue is this?"
Because que is pronounced kay; don’t confuse it with quay, which is pronounce key.
My own gut feeling is that some of the British “queue” mentality is a contrast with the mob behavior on the continent.
People in the UK always seem to be politely standing in line to place an order at the counter, or whatever. In Europe there are many places you just have to push to the front to place your order. If you stand politely, you’ll never get lunch.
I think it comes from the wartime and post war rationing in the UK (which lasted long after the war had finished, so would have seemed unusual to visitors from other countries most especially from the US)
The joke at the time that if an Englishman saw a queue they would join it simply because they did want to miss out on whatever was at the front of it. I think there is a healthy chunk of English chuvinism at work too (as in they may have queues in other countries but they are anarchic free for falls, unlike the respectful British who have the strength of character to wait in line without pushing in)
I was always reminded of it when I lived in SF and walked past countless brunch queues at the weekend.
I agree with this. Also, when average Brits starting taking holidays in abroad from the 70s-ish onwards, it heightened our awareness of cultural differences - suddenly, we could observe that Europeans didn’t hardly queue at all - shocking behaviour! - so it became more of a topic of conversation.
