AIBU to wonder if queuing is a British thing, what on earth do the rest of the world do??

[RubyCav]

I have heard quite a few people state "queuing is a British thing". So what I really can't work out is, how general life would work without people forming nice orderly ques. So I'm turning to mumsnet wisdom to help me understand.

Just back from a holiday in Germany. They seem to queue in a pretty organised way, no pushing, queue jumping etc.

I bet they don't just tut at queue jumpers, though. :)

Was once in a customs hall in Malta after disembarking from a ferry from Italy. The Italians practically caused a riot trying to all get through customs so much so that the Malteese police climbed on the counters and drew their guns.
That caused a queue to form!

Bumped into a couple of different groups of French students in Dover yesterday and they didn't seem to understand the concept of queuing at all and came across as very pushy and bad mannered. Gave me the right hump in fact.

I think the Chinese are the absolute worst. And don't get me started on their children defecating anywhere that takes their fancy.

I hate the lack of queues for trains. I have tried to instill in teenage DD that you have to let people off before you get on. Then I make a kind of wall around her with my arms and propell her forwards, or we'd never get on the train!

Train boarding is a skill indeed. You have to position yourself as close to the door as possible, but not in front of it. It helps to be a regular. After a while you know the spots.

Ferry boarding can be fun too.

Getting on a train in Japan is a joy by comparison.
There are marks on the floor saying where the doors will be. Everyone forms a queue at the marks and then lets people off before getting on.

The U.K. Is the only country I know where people will form an orderly queue of one person!
So you wait for the bus and you can't possibly wait somewhere around the bus stop. Nope, you have to wait exactely where the door will open so that you say clearly that you are the first person in the queue (that doesn't exist yet). The worst thing is that, if you aren't in that particular spot, queuing, anyone who comes will ignore you completely and start the queue. And no, you can't say you were there first because you wern't queuing anyway....
Arrrrg....

Lewji have you ever done the queue for the Portuguese Consulate in London? Most depressing few hours of my life, stood outside in Knightsbridge in the early hours, looking like we were refugees until the damn place opened.

A friend also encountered the passport queue in Lisbon, she was eight months pregnant and can remember fights breaking out around her as they waited in 40 degree heat in August.

The Portuguese do a particular form of bureaucracy that is hugely frustrating, DH always comes close to losing it most times.

The supermarket queue is a social occasion however and my MIL always seems to encounter her whole social circle in Pingo Doce.

Queues in bars however are fair game, I am small and can burrow under the arms of larger people to get to the front. Ha, ha!

Yesterday I was in Buchanan Galleries and saw a mob at the Lego shop with a queue that most were ignoring. Apparently the store holds an event for kids once a month for the first 1k people (I'm not 100% sure on the details).

The poor employee at the entrance was being swarmed by a large group of people as he was trying to hand out what looked like tickets. Outside the store a small orderly lined had been formed by some frazzled looking parents + kids but I watched several people ignore the queue and practically dive into the mob.

All I could think was how I could never do that job as i'd be yelling at people pushing and probably only giving tickets to people lining up nicely lol

I haven't encountered many issues with buses although for some reason the idea that you let people off the bus before piling on seems to elude so many people. I mean seriously it's common bloody sense right? Make room before filling it anew

Ah, the infamous Portuguese Consulate in London.
I did queue in the early morning hours. Well, actually from 6 am or something. Some people were already there
They now have bookings through email, instead of the long lines. Not sure how it works for non-Portuguese nationals. We still have to wait for a long time.
I have heard that they had problems with some officers letting people jump queues. It went through a major reshuffle a few years ago.

The same for passports and ID cards in Portugal. You can book some places online. The last I went to was SO nice and quiet. I made a mistake with my booking and they still sorted by passport.

Singapore was usually quite ordered. If it was a long queue, like waiting for the new release of iphones or a new shop to open, people would sometimes wait themselves (or otherwise get their poor foreign domestic workers to do it for them ). A local Singaporean once jumped infront of me in the '10 items or fewer' queue in the supermarket, and tried to justify it by telling me she had fewer items than me. I went bonkers and she eventually skulked to the back of the queue muttering profanities under her breath (but everyone else in the queue was giving me the sneaky smile that said 'thank goodness you had the balls to tell her!' ).

My sister-in-law is Chinese and thinks queuing is hilarious! She's always first in line!

I've never been to the actual consulate but I paid an agent to arrange my visa to India. Apparently the queues are horrible. The agents must have booked tickets/places or know people.

The first time I noticed the non queuers was in London in the late 70s, early 80s, when queuing for a bus. All the locals (Brits) would form a line behind the bus stop then the non Brits would arrive, stand right up to the bus stop sign, in a gaggle at the front of the queue and jump on when it arrived. This is still the case in London now it seems. Some people seem oblivious to the queue.

Stressed I agree with your SIL.
Sometimes it IS hilarious.

Lweji I paid an agent to arrange my visa to India. Apparently the queues are horrible.

It's a test.
If you can make it through the queues, armed with your obscurely sized passport photo, you're allowed to enter India. It's also only level 1 of queueing/bureaucracy frustration - levels 2 - 496 happen once actually in India*. Although they still had a few ladies queues when I was there - do they still have them? Any Indians here?

My best/worst queueing experience in India involved boats between the Andaman islands. They only started selling tickets about half an hour before the boat left. So there'd be a huge queue by then. Then either tickets would run out or the boat would be leaving before you'd got on. It seemed to be literally impossible to leave the island.

Generally it took a couple of attempts before a tourist got annoyed and just walked onto the boat. Once moving, you'd have to pay some token amount for being on deck. It's a good job I was with some people of less reserved nationalities or I'd have been stuck there weeks!

*It's worth it though.

In Moscow people just push in front of you. The worst was when I was 8 months pregnant queuing for a Metro ticket and a teenager attempted to elbow me out of the way.

Brits mainly seem to like to queue, though seem to abandon this when getting on a bus or train.

I found the Dutch and Germans queued, on a recent trip to Holland and Germany. I found the Germans quite keen queuers.
Ive seen the queue get quite ferocious at non queuers at times and certainly tell them in no uncertain terms to get to the back.

Once I was travelling to South America via USA (big mistake, but that's another story), the day after a security scare of some sort where flights were grounded.

Anyway, Gatwick, American Airlines, long check in queue. At some point I notice this guy inching through the line from behind me and as if he was trying to get in front of me. I started the staring thing and raised eyebrow, but eventually he disappeared when I got somewhat distracted.
In hindsight I suspect he was secret service checking out the suspicious looking lone passenger (me).

I was waiting for someone to mention India. In my experience they either do it with incredible rigidity (if the person in front of you moves 10 cm forward you better do so as well or the person behind you will complain) or they ignore they completely. More often it is the ignore completely and they wonder why you are queuing.

Getting on planes is the worst. Ten (?) years ago they had free seating on planes, so you had to rush on and so people still do. Then when the planes lands people will stand up the second the plane touched down, the cabin crew make announcements multiple times that you must remain seating until the seatbelt sign is turned off. I love when I am one of the last off the plane and get my luggage before the stand up immediately people, it happens most of the time.

I think tourists and queuing is a different matter.
Supermarkets in the USA and Europe have queues, there is not mayhem and pushing at the tills. I used to live in the middle east and there was order getting on buses and in shops.

We were in Dubai recently, queuing for a ride at a waterpark.

The queue was quite long, and we were behind three girls. As we snaked up, we suddenly registered that there was a group of Spanish people in front of us, whose friends are coming up from behind and ducking in and out. Clearly queue jumping.

DH, who's never been one to shy away from confrontation, called them on it, and they obviously denied it vehemently.

But the funny thing was that the guy from the group behind us jumped in to agree, and ran off to get a member of staff, and then the three girls ahead of us who we'd previously been behind, were saying, 'hang on, those people were right behind us before'.

So the queue-jumpers totally got called on it, and had to stand back while everyone they'd jumped demanded to go ahead of them.

It was an international queue d'état, and it was massively satisfying.

When in Holland my exDP would say "don't forget, queue like a Dutchman" Ie don't actually queue, but shove and jump the queue with abandon.