Waiting for Godot at the grocer’s
I’ve realized the thing that most enrages me in daily life is not Victoria’s sewage debate, Donald Trump or the challenge of finding good stuff on Netflix. It’s waiting in a lineup. This occurred to me while queuing at the grocery store. An elderly woman ahead of me was buying a tin of cat food and three bananas.
The thing that annoyed me was that this woman, who’d dyed her white hair pink, was having a big old chinwag with the cashier.
This non-grocery-related conversation extended her transaction by about, oh, 30 seconds. At one point she told the cashier her cat was called Minnie. Upon hearing this, I began to fantasize about this grandmother undergoing various forms of painful torture, such as the rack and some kind of primitive thumb-screw device.
Then I thought: “What’s on earth is wrong with you? Why do you want to deny this chatty senior a few seconds of conversation? Where’s your compassion, your sense of humanity, your basic human decency?”
Well, my basic human decency had obviously gone in the dung heap. That’s what lineups do to you. They make us lose all sense of perspective.
Lineups factor big in our lives. Researchers figure we spend one to three years queuing up over the average lifetime. That’s in incredibly vague estimate, of course. But it’s safe to say we spend a disproportion amount of time patiently (or not so patiently) waiting our turn.
There’s lineups for ferries, traffic, doctor’s offices, airports, movies, restaurants. And don’t forget the small horror of being “put on hold” during phone transactions. (An exaggeration? Well, let’s just say I once heard a muzak version of Kansas’s Carry On My Wayward Son while on hold. I’m still recovering.)
Have you even witnessed what happens when someone butts in line? This happens fairly often at a Tim Hortons I frequent. People are so excited by the prospect of double-doubles and raspberryinfused Timbits, the line is always long. At this location, it’s not always obvious where the back of the line is. So some folk erroneously join in the middle, right where it hair-pins around near the front door.
Queue-jumping is highly disconcerting to others in the Tim Hortons lineup. There’s a ripple of unease up and down the line. Meaningful looks are exchanged. Our sense of Canadian fairness is discombobulated. Usually someone will step up and say: “Hey, the end of the line of over there.” The offender will either pretend not to notice (this is rare), or more often, apologize humbly and profusely (this is Canada, after all).
(Fun fact: In 2007, the state of Washington approved a bill fining those who cut into ferry lines. The so-called “jackass bill” also stipulates offenders are sent to the back of the line.)
Line-jumping in traffic is a much worse offence. The typical scenario is people who zoom past a stationary line of cars only to merge at the last moment, thus cutting into a queue. It’s a common trigger for road rage — although it’s apparently the most efficient way of getting traffic moved though.
Why the anger? It’s because we all hate the experience of being in line. And why is that? Well, to state the obvious — it’s the sense, literally, of not (or barely) moving forward. Being in a line is like trying to walk down a street with someone’s hand pushing you back. It’s a feeling of powerlessness.
Our emotional responses to queuing aren’t exactly rational. Studies suggest people prefer longer lineups that move faster, even if the wait time is identical to a slower line with fewer people.
Here’s something else. Apparently, we are happier to wait longer if we think the service is valuable. So we’ll wait longer for a doctor or a plane than for a box of Timbits.
We’re also happier in lineups if we can be entertained in some way. There’s a famous example from the 1950s. People complained of long elevator waits in a Manhattan highrise. Someone figured the cheapest solution might be installing full-length mirrors on the sides of the elevator entrances. That way people could amuse themselves by looking at themselves or others waiting for the lift. Surprisingly, it did the trick — the complaints stopped.
Today, we typically entertain ourselves in lineups with smartphones. But why not have something funner, something more imaginative? Perhaps a standup comedian. Or someone who can juggle bananas or tins of cat food. Or maybe actors could perform a scene from a famous play.
Waiting for Godot might be a good one.