A fine line between love and hate

One of the minor challenges of travelling in Cambodia has been adjusting myself to the different queuing habits of various places and travellers. There are the people who really don't queue at all, the people who view queuing as a fine way to get ahead of you by cutting in line, and the people who queue but hold slightly different standards about acceptable queuing behavior.

Of those groups the third is the most irritating. A South Korean man did something yesterday that would have been nearly unthinkable: he simply brazenly cut in front of me in the passport control line to exit Cambodia. (Yes, in both Cambodia and Vietnam, you have to pass through immigration both ways.) But I just said "No" firmly, and he want back to the end of the line. On the other hand, I stood in line with a bunch of Germans in a Siem Reap store, which turned into a nightmare. I was acting the way Americans act in queues . . . wandering five feet away to look at something, staring everywhere around the shop except at the clerk. The result was that about three German women cut in front of me.

I am assuming (it's been a while since I was in Germany, and I was paying more attention to the beer than the queuing rules) that this is just some cultural variant on queuing, rather than, say, a bunch of extremely rude women who knew an opportunity when they saw it. Which is not a ridiculous assumption. It's not inherent to queuing that you should be able to step moderately out of line and then rejoin it, though I'd argue that this is a superior equilibrium to everyone staring straight ahead. But what's important is that it has to be a collective equilibrium; you can't make up your own rules. If you don't, you (presumably) get what I did: a bunch of people cutting ahead of you. Rules about all of these trivial things are the operating system of our society--and one of the reasons that people of all nations don't do more business abroad. It's hard to agree on common terms if you don't even recognize all the new collective judgements that have to be made.

Comments

German lines are basically every man for himself. For instance, in a grocery store where a number of carts are lined up, it's not uncommon to see someone with only a couple of items barge ahead of the (unable to move) people in carts. If there is more than one customer service agent, don't try to form one line serving all, because Germans will assume you're all lined up for agent A, and charge right up to the counter as soon as agent B opens up. Also, lines form along the counter to the right rather than perpendicularly outward, which can lead to confusion.

I don't think it's really rudeness by German standards, but the Germans themselves do refer to the "Ellenbogengesellshaft," or "Elbow society" in which everyone is always jostling to get ahead of everyone else. I find it unpleasant but you can't hope to change it.

Posted by Rob Lyman | November 19, 2007 8:25 PM

What Rob said. My experience of Deutschland was the same. If you queue up behind someone at, say, the coffee shop, the nice gentleman who goes right around you to get the clerk's attention will while doing so give you a very curious look, wondering perhaps whether you are indeed a tourist, or just taking pity on you.

Posted by Mike W | November 19, 2007 8:44 PM

The irony of this blog is that the German tourists appear to have had a much better idea of the "new collective judgements that have to be made" than did Megan McArdle.

They recognized that if you are queuing in an unknown environment the optimal, and most polite strategy, is to focus on the queue and not on the rest of the shop. Doing this minimizes the chance of the queue being viewed as a nightmare by everyone in it.

Posted by ndm | November 19, 2007 10:00 PM

Traditional Russian style is to address the folk at the end of the line and ask, "Who's last?" Then the questioner gets to be after that person. The line exists as much in people's minds as in space.

Posted by Amy P | November 19, 2007 10:31 PM

Countries that have suffered through, communism, price controls or hyper-inflations, tend to have aggressive line behavior. At one time in their not too distant history, if you didn't find a way to cut to the front of the line, you weren't going to get anything.

Posted by Jack Mayes | November 19, 2007 10:43 PM

Koreans think nothing of cutting in front of "foreigners" =anybody who is not Korean.

Posted by Steve Kristy | November 19, 2007 11:00 PM

The "who's last?" question also works in Poland, especially when the line is in a waiting room or other non-linear space.

In a line of the kind described by Megan, one establishes one's place with the people ahead and behind before wandering off. Otherwise you'll be accused of cutting in line when you try to rejoin.

I don't think either rules works especially well with Germans, whose public style IME tends toward the .... robust. The only defense then is a good offense, assertive vocal challenges of the kind most Americans aren't usually very good at.

Posted by michael farris | November 20, 2007 2:43 AM

I was acting the way Americans act in queues . . . wandering five feet away to look at something, staring everywhere around the shop except at the clerk. The result was that about three German women cut in front of me.

You must come from a different America than the one where I grew up.

Wander away from the queue and you aren't in line anymore. That is why it is referred to as a "line" here in the US.

Step out of the line and you go back to the end. That is simply common courtesy.

It must be some sort of New York thing where you can browse the rest of the shop and still expect to hold your place. Why they think they can do that is a mystery to me, as is their assumption that the rest of the country does things the way they do it in New York.

James

Posted by James R. Rummel | November 20, 2007 4:30 AM

Don't know what James is talking about, and his reverse snobbishness is perhaps the most annoying this I've ever read on this blog.

Down in Louisiana, people indeed respect your place in line and will generally not step in front of you before politely asking you if you are waiting. Exceptions are schoolyards (maybe this explains James) or some rock concerts / sporting events where people's desire to help their friends / participate in the event leads to all sorts of dubious behavior.

Because of this cultural background, I hated that aspect living in Europe - the number of times someone pushed in front of me at the supermarket when I thought it was clear where I was standing...or the people who rush to the new window that opens - I recognize that one alright. Yeesh.

In turn, I'm sure that Europeans would complain about our system - it is a truth that those cultural mores really do becomes engrained in you, and when you find yourself in a place where people feel comfortable breaking them, it throws you off.

Posted by Vermando | November 20, 2007 5:11 AM

True story: My German girlfriend and I arrived at Dulles from Germany at an off time, i.e. the lines for passport control were essentially non-existent. We Americans dutifully filed through the back-and-forth straps which define the line.

The non-Americans (mostly German) slipped and shimmied under the straps to get to the front of their line first. I can only speak for myself - though I can imagine our line shared the thought - "Typical."

Lo and behold, straight from central casting, a 'portly' Customs Officer materialized at the front of the non-US mass and boomed, "What's going on here? This isn't how we form a line in America." He made nearly everyone go back around the straps and shuffle through the back-and-forth.

Wide grins, chuckles and an intense feeling of statisfaction permeated the US line, let me tell you.

When we met up at the luggage carousel, I was still laughing and my girlfriend was none too thrilled with the 'I told you so' look on my face (we'd had a few go-rounds about queuing in the past). I suppose the laugh was on me, however, since she was at the front of the prison break and had already been called to a window before the Customers Officer arrived. So, in her mind, the 'business as usual' German approach only reinforced itself.

I've been in Germany for eight years now, and it does seem that the rudeness in lines has diminished. Of course that probably means that I just don't see it / react anymore. Either that, or I've subconsciously adopted that 'elbow' mentality that Rob Lyman mentioned above.

Cheers,

Posted by Rofe | November 20, 2007 7:54 AM

Regarding the Russian style of queuing, this is implicitly the way it works in barber shops. Men don't sit in any particular order, but they are aware of who was in the shop when they arrived and who came in after. When it's your turn you know because there is no one left who was there when you arrived. And it's usually easy to see when someone came after you tries to cut in line. Somehow the system always seems to work.

Regarding Germans, I realized there was something peculiar about them on my first trip to Germany many years ago. I arrived late at night but was wide awake, so I went for a walk on the deserted streets. Coming to a red light and seeing no traffic I naturally walked through, as any American would. On the other side was a German who, seeing me cross, just assumed that the light had changed and started walking toward me. Half way across, however, the German noticed that he had inadvertantly crossed against the light. He dutifully went back to his side and waited for a green signal, giving me a scowl for being a scofflaw. I was highly amused.

Posted by Bruce Bartlett | November 20, 2007 9:05 AM

Bruce Bartlett beat me to it by a single comment! I have been going to barber shops for most of the last 35 years, and not a single time have I seen someone cut in front of another even though there is no physical line.

Posted by Yancey Ward | November 20, 2007 10:09 AM

Just yesterday I was wondering about this: Why is queuing so common? Why don't more places have a system in which you get a number when you arrive, and then you are called by number order? It is much more efficient for the people who would otherwise be stuck queuing and are now free to wander around, even leave the place to come back later if they know there is a long left before their number. It might even be better for the employees who do not have to adjudicate who's first in the queue when there is confusion. The costs of the number-dispensing device seem small, but perhaps the shops and bureaucratic institutions have no incentive to provide it?

Posted by Alejandro | November 20, 2007 10:09 AM

In the US, wandering 5 feet away (was it really 5 feet, Megan?) will not usually cost your place in line as long as you were not last when you did it. I don't wander away myself, but if someone in front of me does, I will mentally reserve that person's place for a moment or two, but no longer without asking them if they are still in line. The problem is people who queue behind me- they may not have been there when the wanderer stepped out, and I don't like to be thought of as someone who allows skippers.

Posted by Yancey Ward | November 20, 2007 10:14 AM

I was in line at my pharmacy yesterday. There was a foreign born woman, not sure from where, in front of me. About 8 feet away, there was a shelf of vitamins. She saw something she wanted, and stretched to get it, coming up about 5 feet short. She took a little step and did it again, then again and again. Obviously, she knew she could not reach the item she wanted without leaving the line. It was all a pantomime for my benefit, signalling that she was still in line. I felt tempted to take a small step forward to see if she would scurry back.

I think in America, your place in line has a nebulous half-life that decays faster with distance or a lack of line-of-sight.

Posted by Njorl | November 20, 2007 10:22 AM

My favorite queue story takes place when I was 21 and in Scotland. I was in Edinburgh but I couldn't get a flight in and out cheaply so I had flown in to Glasgow and had to take the bus from there to Edinburgh. On the way back the bus left every two hours from the Edinburgh bus station. I hadn't bothered to find out when it was so I got to the station with enough time to catch an 8AM bus if there was one and, if not, I would catch a 9AM bus and be at the Glasgow airport in pleanty of time.

Of course the bus was not to come until 9am so, being the college student I was, I plopped myself down on the ground and pulled out a book. 40 minutes later I lifted my head and there was perfectly straight queue of 14 people standing behind me, waiting for the 9AM bus to arrive. It was unnerving.

Posted by Kate | November 20, 2007 10:24 AM

Don't know, guys, if I'm on line and want to get something beyond arm's reach, I ask the person behind me to hold my place for a minute. They always do, and I'm never gone for more than a few seconds. And I live in NY.

Posted by Stuart | November 20, 2007 10:31 AM

The Brits queue like champs. I think it was the war; they learned the habit and by the time rationing stopped (in 1951 or 1952), it had simply become too ingrained to change, like those pub closing hours that stayed in force from 1914 until last year.

I have often found Germans to be very unpleasant overseas - they often display an astonishing boorishness and contempt for foreign cultures. It's so exactly the sort of behavior that they love to attribute to Americans that I have to wonder whether they haven't invented a fifty-syllable psycho-babble term for it. Schreikkeitauslanderunvertgeliebenfreude or something.

Posted by Nanonymous | November 20, 2007 10:38 AM

There is one other queuing situation I have always found fascinating that occurs on highways:

I commute on I-84 through the area around Danbury, CT and there are two fairly steep hills to the east of Danbury where the highway expands to 3 lanes for heavily ladened trucks. During rush hours, the traffic often slows to a crawl, especially on these hills. Most of the drivers, being locals, know that you must merge again at the top and, knowing this, most drivers don't use the far right lane, even though it will often take them right to the front of the line (and, incidentally, make the back up worse because of the delay in letting skippers merge at the top). Now, there are always people zooming up the truck lane (about 10% of the cars by my estimate), and those people get lots of dirty looks. Occasionally, some drivers try to prevent this by simply moving over but pacing the car to their left; this is often futile unless blocker is willing to actively obstruct the upcoming traffic from passing on the shoulder since the skipper can see what you are trying to do. Every now and then, a large semi will perform the duty, and being so large, they can't be seen around and can straddle the right lane and shoulder, effectively blocking the line jumpers. Whenever I see this, I put myself to the left of the blocker's bumper and pace him/her, and allow them to remerge at the top.

Posted by Yancey Ward | November 20, 2007 10:45 AM

The Germans may be bad, but there's (the last time I was in Europe) no such thing as a line in Italy and Spain. It's strictly hand to hand combat.

Posted by Patrick R. Sullivan | November 20, 2007 10:46 AM

One other:

Four-way stop sign intersections. In the US, at least, it is a dependable, orderly queue.

Posted by Yancey Ward | November 20, 2007 11:05 AM

Okay...another example.
If you want to order something in Belize, forget the queue, just work your way close to the front and shout out your order. The workers don't even look up to see who is next physically, they're just listening for the next order. It is embarrassing how many times I got all worked up that someone behind me got served ahead of me before I figured out how the system works.

Posted by Musa | November 20, 2007 11:22 AM

My experience with Italy was the same as Patrick's. I was on a bus tour of Europe. Going in to Italy there was a massive backup on the highway. When the bus got to a crowded rest stop, there was no line for service, you just tried to slowly push your way to the front. The guy behind the counter seemed to be giving women priority, and then Italian men. As an American male, it took some time to get anything.

Posted by Tim Fowler | November 20, 2007 12:05 PM

It is my experience that you have to actively defind your place in line in Italy. If you allow yourself to look around for a second, you discover that you are in a different place in line. Others moved in front of you while you were gathering wool.

But the absolute worst for standing in line are, forgive me, Asians. I do not believe that it makes any difference what country, east or west, north or south. They will walk right past a westerner as though you are not there. And it happened to me last week in Philadelphia, you do not need to be in Asia!

Posted by Kathie | November 20, 2007 12:42 PM

I heard that in South Korea it was McDonalds that first introduced queuing.

Posted by Christina | November 20, 2007 2:25 PM

In Japan, lines tend to be orderly and not too different from the US. However, it's not uncommon to see somebody push right into the line, at least in the big cities-- I noticed this happen a number of times in the lines for the ticket machines in subway stations. Being a fairly non-confrontational society, I never saw anyone make a stink about being pushed in front of. Definitely not what would happen in NYC or Philly....

Posted by Townleybomb | November 20, 2007 2:39 PM

Stuart - even before I got to your last sentence, I knew you were from NY, since you referred to it as waiting "on line."

Posted by Peter Bautista | November 20, 2007 2:40 PM

Don't know, guys, if I'm on line and want to get something beyond arm's reach, I ask the person behind me to hold my place for a minute.

That's different, and I've held places in line for people who had forgotten to grab an item from the shelves.

But Megan didn't do anything like that. She just wandered out of line and was shocked, shocked, that people assumed she wasn't in the queue (because she wasn't) and stepped ahead of her.

James

Posted by James R. Rummel | November 20, 2007 3:45 PM

But Megan didn't do anything like that. She just wandered out of line and was shocked, shocked, that people assumed she wasn't in the queue (because she wasn't) and stepped ahead of her.

Tell me, if you ever got over yourself, would it require a forty-minute hike?

What MM said was, "It's not inherent to queuing that you should be able to step moderately out of line and then rejoin it, though I'd argue that this is a superior equilibrium to everyone staring straight ahead. But what's important is that it has to be a collective equilibrium; you can't make up your own rules."

If she was "shocked, shocked" about anything, she sure did a good job of hiding it. Seems to me that it was, instead, an interesting observation on cultural differences one doesn't normally realize as existing until confronted with visibly different ones.

Posted by anony-mouse | November 20, 2007 8:30 PM

Yes but the example doesn't work if that's not what you'd actually expect to happen in America. I'm from New York too and I wouldn't just wander away from the line expecting to keep my place.

Posted by mad6798j | November 20, 2007 9:47 PM

Guys, I didn't leave the line; I took one step away from it to get something off a shelf, which every place I've ever been, is perfectly normal behavior. (yes, Yancey, it was really five feet; less, actually. I could almost reach the thing I was looking at while in the line.) Obviously, I wouldn't expect my place to be held if I'd wandered back to get a sandwich at the place next door, but this was not the case. Moreover, the German women also cut in front of me while I was back in the line, but not as fast to catch the clerk's eye as they were.

Posted by Megan McArdle | November 21, 2007 5:12 AM

This:

I took one step away from it to get something off a shelf

is not the same as this:

I was acting the way Americans act in queues . . . wandering five feet away to look at something, staring everywhere around the shop except at the clerk.

Posted by Mitch Berkson | November 21, 2007 9:17 AM

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned China's attempt to change their 'queuing culture' in time for the Beijing Olympics. They've designated the 11th of every month as 'stand in line day' (since the number 11 looks kind of like two people in line). I haven't heard if they're going to expand to two or more days a month and gradually work up, or if the government thinks that getting people used to doing it temporarily will allow them to put on a show for the Olympics and then go right back to where they were. In other words, I don't know if they're trying to make it permanent.

I've never particularly liked Singapore's nanny approach to government - for instance the signs in the airport bathrooms warning that it is illegal to fail to flush the toilet, or the urine sensors in elevators that make people with children in diapers fear to use the elevator - but I think it's a way to try to change the equilibrium. As Megan said, there's a collective equilibrium (i.e. culture), and it can be hard to change.

Posted by Ann | November 21, 2007 10:25 AM

Oh, boy, it's "The plural of anecdote IS evidence" day, here at Megan's place.

About 8 years ago my (American) family spent the Christmas / New Years holidays in Germany and Austria, visiting friends and skiing. My kids were 8 and 10 then, and I had to *actively* defend them from being run over in the skilift lines. Didn't seem to matter if the persons behind were teens, men, women, or whatever.
My German friend laughed when I told him about it, and said that "only the Brits and Americans stand in queues. Everybody else just muscles their way to the front."
He had some extensive theory about post-WW2 generations that supposedly explained the behavior, but I can't recall the details.

Posted by Fred the Fourth | November 21, 2007 12:07 PM

Agree with Bruce about men in barber shops. Never a problem in over 60 years.

Now that I'm a geezer who takes medication, I notice awkward queuing at the pharmacy counter. Pharmacists now have to "counsel" people getting prescriptions. Mercifully, most of them just ask you to sign a release saying that you have been counselled. Other customers want to avoid hearing about your medical problems or what your prescription is and they don't line up near the counter. Instead there is no line. Men know what to do. You make a mental note of who is loitering in the vicinity of the pharmacy counter and wait until everyone who was there when you walked in has received their prescription and left. If someone has received a prescription but returns with a question, you gracefully back away from the counter out of earshot until the person has received an answer and left again. younger people, especially young women not used to this, get visibly confused by all this, but soon catch on.
During the summer I work with colleagues running the wait list at a very busy restaurant. People line up in front of me or one of my colleagues and get a pager. The number of the pager and the number of persons to be seated is entered into a database. When an appropriately sized table opens up, the dining room manager calls the pager number at the top of the list. Smarter or more resourceful people can call ahead for a specific time. If you call ahead you go to the top of the list for that particular time slot.

The restaurant customers include quite a few foreign tourists, especially Chinese, British, Germans, French, Irish, and both kinds of Canadians. I have seen no differences in queuing behavior. Sometimes two people will approach at the same time and one party will usually graciously defer to the other.

There are two types of line jumpers in my work experience. Sometimes the wait can be as much as an hour. When this is the case some people will call ahead for a time slot 15 minutes hence. We usually catch on to those and refuse them. Some people call to be placed on the wait list and we politely explain that they have to be physically present to receive the pager. This restaurant is in a national park. Sometimes a family group that is out hiking will send a young child running ahead to get a pager. This can backfire because the dining room manager will refuse to seat anyone until all members of the party are present. Generally when a young kid runs up and breathlessly asks for a pager, we warn them about this.

I like what banks do. Banks know that people don't want others to hear about their financial affairs and set up a single queu well back from the counter. When a teller completes a transaction and send the customer on his or her way, the teller calls out, "next" or "I can help the next person in line." I see that the chain bookstores have adopted this strategy as well, perhaps because people don't want others to know what they are reading.

Posted by Jim Linnane | November 21, 2007 4:31 PM

If you really want to experience obnoxious German queue behavior go skiing in Austria.

I got to the point where if one more obnoxious German (or Austrian I suppose) ran over my skis to get to the foot of space between me and the person in front of me in the lift line I was gonna start another World War:-)

Jim, I think athe main ides is that one line is formed and then multiple cashiers all draw from that one line, takes away the pressure of always guessing wrong about which line to get in:-) This is the way they do it at both REI and Powells books here in Portland. I think it is mostly driven by space efficiency, one line takes up less space, I don't think it is to protect your book buying secrecy:-)

Posted by Eric K | November 21, 2007 6:22 PM

Jim and Eric commented on the 'one queue, multiple service agent' model versus the alternate 'one queue per service agent' model.

There is a proof via queueing theory that the 'one queue, multiple agent' model leads to shorter average wait times. I'm sure the confidentiality angle is relevant, but I think the shorter wait times is the driving force for this type of queue.

Of course these models assume that there is no line cutting allowed.

Posted by Gary W | November 22, 2007 10:49 AM

For the obsessively exhaustive resource on queuing behaviour, complete with photos, y'all must, must must visit:

http://standinaqueue.wordpress.com

Posted by Zoe | November 22, 2007 7:57 PM