There are many things we associate with being British: tea,
fish and chips, and depending who you ask – queuing.
I think everyone understands the concept of queuing, without
it where would we be? How would we know when our turn to be served had arrived?
It is a distinct possibility that we would stand in
bewilderment in McDonalds for hours on end, possibly wasting away until we
collapse of starvation, ok I’m exaggerating but you get the jist.
I have nothing against queuing, as I said it serves a point.
What I do raise objection to, no, strike that, what I hate with a passion is
the people at the front of the queue who appear to have forgotten why they are
there.
Imagine the situation:
Your day starts out fine, you pop to the shops in your break
to grab some lunch, stopping to take some money out of the bank on route.
There are three cashpoint machines, of course two of them
are out of action, as they always appear to be, so a queue of around three
people are waiting.
Not too bad, not too bad at all you think. How wrong can you
be?
The first person is using the cashpoint to check the balance
of every account they own, fair enough, that’s what they are for. The second
draws their cash and leaves.
The end is in sight, or so you thought, but then the third
person can’t find their bank card, why is it not in their hand ready? Did they
not realise five minutes ago when they joined the queue that it would be
needed?
Tensions are rising.
What feels like a few minutes (but is possibly just 40
seconds or so) of scrambling in their bag produces the purse in which the card
is housed and inserted into the machine, cash out and away. At last.
On to the supermarket to get some milk for the office. A
scan of the queues reveals the shortest one and you make your way to it.
You arrive a split second behind a woman pushing a months
worth of groceries in a trolley. Does she use a little common sense and allow
you to just nip in front whilst she is unpacking?
Does she hell? Ten minutes later you finally get to pay.
A quick stop at a fast food restaurant (fast food and restaurant,
isn’t that joke in itself? Don’t even get me started on that) to get something
to eat before returning to work should be simple enough.
You decide what you are going to have on the drive there so
you are ready to order. Don’t you?
However, everybody else in the queue must have been
transported there by some form of materialisation where they didn’t even know where
they were going by the sound of all the: “Ummm” and “Ahhh, I’m not sure what to
order” comments.
Did you have your car on auto drive? Did you black out and
wake up at the front of the queue in KFC thinking you had gone to get a
newspaper. Order the damn chicken and move on!
