Switching to a shorter queue doesn’t work – and it is just not British

Don’t you just hate it when Americans claim they know best? This from a people who carry firearms, call the loo a bathroom and serve marshmallows smeared on their vegetables.

Harvard Business School has just decreed that when you are in a queue and the other lines appear to be moving faster, there is no benefit to be had from changing.

And their point is?

Here in Britain, we don’t need to be told how to queue properly; it’s what we do. It’s in our blood, along with tutting, harrumphing and looking askance at anyone who attempts to sidle forward or bustle past.

We don’t say anything, of course. Much better to have a knotted stomach and a rising sense of agitation.

Will that man butt in? What if that old lady does? What will I say? How will she respond? Who will back me if it descends into confrontation?

With that inner monologue going on, who’s got the emotional energy to change lanes?

Respectable people do not switch queues. There, I’ve said it. Not even at the cash machines on a station concourse when the 13.06 to Windsor is about to depart and they are off to a wedding, or a funeral, or to see Rula Lenska in a matinee performance of The Case of the Frightened Lady.

Not only does switching constitute cheating (don’t ask me why, it just does), but what will the other complete strangers in the queue think?

This bit is especially important. Imagine their schadenfreude if their queue (which used to be your queue until you abandoned it) reaches the ticket desk or the post office counter before your new, inferior queue?

You will look foolish and bumptious. And in these sceptred isles, that’s a far worse fate than queuing.