For the last month I have been having a great time traveling around England with my sister and best friend tye. We had a brilliant time and got to do many great things, like see all the old architecture that we just don’t get exposed to in Australia or even the southern hemisphere come to think of it. So really it was amazing to see all these places, and somehow we even missed out on the typical English weather until London where it rained on us three days out of five. I guess you cannot get everything though.
Standing at the gate waiting paitently to board my plane, i had nothing better to do than to note how people queued for their flights. One thing I immediately realised is that every country has a different reason for queuing and therefore a different style of doing it. In England for example, (the country I had gotten used to over the past month) queuing is something people do because well, it is right and proper to queue. A country that is hung up on being gentlemen and women, que because you must. The line must always be straight, unless there is something in the way then you are allowed to moved to the side slightly, the line can only be a single person at a time, or if you are in a group then you are allowed to queue together but you must only take up the room of one person once you get to the ticket desk or whatever it is you are queuing for. These are the rules that the British follow.
Australians (which as we all know draw heritage from those Brits) queue in much the same way. Except, we don’t mind if the line is curvy as you should be able to find the end of it anyway, and if you cant well you obviously don’t deserve to be in the line. For Australians queuing is also a social event, a place where you get to meet and get to know people. Thinking about it, I met my best friend at school waiting to go into the teachers staff room, met people I know socialize with in queues for all sorts of things, busses, trains, to go into the principals office, queues at the shops everywhere. We seem to draw our queuing ability from the British, as we do after all come from them anyway.
Looking around the airport you can see this, all the flights for England and Australia, if you notice when the gate is opened, sure there will be a rush to get the front of the line, but then everyone somehow falls into two nice straight steadily moving lines so that everyone gets onto the plane comfortable and happy.
New Zealanders, (a country that like Australia is owned by the British) seem to have done away with a lot of this. They have changed their language for a start, so that the only way you are understood by other New Zealanders is if you call the Bro or Cus. So when there gates open I tend to notice they all sit back, I can just here them saying “relax Bro/Cus (use whichever one you feel appropriate for the time) we have our tickets eh”
Meanwhile the Greeks have sort of understood the queuing thing, a country with thousands of years of civilization behind it, and they still struggle with this little act. Many of them like to stand in clusters comparing such thing as who’s grandson is better and polishing their faces with little cloths dampened with most tongues.
But the people who take the cake for worst queers would have to be the Slovaks. A nice people and race, but they are still quite young as a nation and not yet trained in the ways of the world. Standing at the gates, it was a peaceful as can be, but as soon as those gates opened it was like being caught in a mob at a g8 summit. I just got picked up and carried along with the crowed, desperately I thrust my ticket at the man standing at the gate, who seemed bewildered that 400 people (all who had booked seats) could possibly think that they could all fit through a gap designed for two at a time. We must remember at this point that he was British and therefore couldn’t possibly understand these Slovaks charging at him.
By not queuing the Slovaks have successfully eliminated the need to get to any one place early. You just arrive at the time, and push your way to the front of the line, and the less people that push back the better. No more cold mornings waiting for such things as tickets to the Olympics, just get there when the ticket box opens and push your way to the front.
To me this is an example of the modern day world. Take a look, all the old jobs such as stonemasonry are dying out, and being replaced by such high paced jobs as IT, a area that has grown legs and is running at almost the speed of light, the moment you buy a computer or tv anymore it is instantly out of date and you will need to upgrade in a few weeks if you want the new channel, or better sound quality. The modern world is advancing at an alarming rate, being driven forwards by the consumerism of the people of the world. The time for standing in line and waiting for what you want is long gone, now you need to go get it, before it either slips away or someone else gets it first.
So if we find ourselves queuing for a bus with some Slovaks, sure we may feel better if we queue properly and don’t push, we may feel like gentlemen or women who are of much better social standing and intelligence. But remember when you finally get on that bus (if you manage to) you will be the one who is standing.
And I for one, blame the romans.
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