Where at in PA?
I’ve never heard that in western PA (“yinzer” territory) or in southern PA (York-Gettysburg region).
Poking around online it seems to be mostly a New York regionalism.
Seems like only yesterday that we Yanks used to stand in line for days to get Star Wars tickets before the theaters joined the 21st century and started selling them online.
I remember maybe 7 or 8 years ago a Buffalo Wild Wings was having its grand opening here in Olympia and it was announced that the first 100 guests would get free wings for a year. I worked graveyard shift at the time and got off at 6 AM, so I figured if I drove over there I could get in line early enough to get in on that deal, only to find when I arrived that the line was already much longer than 100 people. No chicken wing is worth standing in a line that long for.
And none of them are necessary (at least for pronunciation).
mmm
This reminds me of whenever some place sponsors a local gas station with a “Free Fill-Up’s for the First 200 cars!” and there will literally be 5 hour lines of people trying to get free gas.
You’re waiting 5 hours to save $60 in gas? If you just worked for that 5 hours it would be a better use of that time.
I think this is a big part of it. The British aren’t contrasting themselves with Americans on this topic. This is why the American OP feels like the British claim of exceptionalism regarding queueing doesn’t make sense.
No doubt it varies on the continent (I’m sure the Germans can form an orderly queue) but there are many places where it would be a point of difference between the British and various varieties of continental.
My thought is that they were comparing themselves to the cultures of their subjugated colonial possessions.
Carlisle, many years ago.
This like being in a work meeting and making a profound suggestion, then your boss making the same suggestion 10 minutes later and everyone agreeing with him.*
*ie see my earlier post.
Your post is somewhat ironic given that your point had been made by @echoreply even earlier, and it was to him that I was responding.
In any event, I probably should’ve stopped after my first paragraph, which was my main point.
Back in the 1980s, a local Toronto radio station ran a contest, where they announced “Free gas for the next 25 cars at _____” where the blank was filled in by the address of a Shell gas station. I was on my way home from work one day, and had the radio on, and realized that today’s gas station was two blocks from where I was. So I pulled in, and got a free tank of gas, courtesy of CHFI 98.1 FM. I don’t remember a queue, but I do remember the station as being very busy that day at that time.
Of course, they took names, and so, on the rest of my way home, I heard “And we congratulate Joe Blow and Susan Bloggs and Whatsizname Spoons for being first to arrive at the Shell station on Anyroad and getting a free tank of gas!”
Not as disciplined as the Britons. Yes, we’ll queue at a bank or office counter, but if the counter is for selling beer, all bets are off and the loudest, pushiest and most obnoxious gets served first. We also don’t orderly queue at the bus stop like British people, we just lump together and push each other into the bus.
Indeed. And to the French, the Italians and Spaniards, Turks, Russians and all those people they so despised and often had beaten Perfidious Albion, I tell you.
You can’t have been in a crowded British pub - though I think it’s fair to say both bar staff and jostling punters do have a sense of whose turn it is next, even without forming an actual line. Unlike the first bar I went to in Vancouver, where they really did form an orderly line snaking back across the room
I was in the London airport in 1966. There was a queue to get a taxi. It was the most orderly queue I’ve ever seen. People stood about 3 feet apart and when the queue on the sidewalk edge crossed where a crosswalk came to the curb (excuse me kerb), it stopped on one side and picked up on the other side.
Stockholm OTOH had even pushier crowds than New York.
Yes, I’ve never been in a crowded British pub, though I’d love to be one time. Actually, I’ve never been to Britain at all (which is my loss, I know).
I hazily remember places where the prettiest girl got served first. By which I want to imply neither that I was the one serving nor that the prettiest girl was not also the loudest, pushiest or most obnoxious in the crowd, at times.
I’ve heard “on line” quite often, and have not spent much time in NY.
(Unless some references are from media written/filmed there.)
Always struck me as odd usage.
Yes, it’s a New York regionalism that really isn’t found anywhere else, but so many New Yorkers move elsewhere that you may have heard it from other people. I use it all the time, it is completely normal to me and is the default way to say it here.
Absolutely, it’s quite standard for someone to say, ‘actually I think you were first’.
So you’ve been to Canada.