Whether it's queuing for the bank, a film premiere or airport security, it seems like we are always waiting in line, writes Shane Hegarty
A man stood patiently in line for 90 minutes so that he could spit at Jane Fonda during a book signing. Diehard fans began queuing seven weeks in advance at a Los Angeles cinema to be the first to see the final Star Wars movie, only to discover that it will premiere at another cinema.
Some mourners queued for half a day to file past the body of Pope John Paul II. This week, increased security checks at Dublin Airport caused the line to snake around the building, with travellers waiting half an hour to put their shoes through the scanning machine.
At any one time, a decent proportion of the planet's population is standing impatiently in a line, shuffling slowly forward, guarding their spot, grumbling about someone skipping the queue. We spend a year of our lives queuing, say the statistics. People now make a decent living queuing on behalf of others, while "queue theorists" try to figure out how to make queues smaller, faster and more entertaining. Tempting impulse buys line the route. Television screens are placed at the top of the queue, advertising things to distract you. There is a lucrative industry in "queuing furniture", which is the fancy term for those metal poles with extendable tape.
Most of us must queue at some time of every day. In a shop, at the West Link toll bridge, in the bank, at an ATM. The Irish might even be considered decent at queuing, impatient but stoic. There are places, though, where order might never replace chaos. People do not form an orderly line to get on a train. Instead, they fight and gouge their way on board as if there's an asteroid heading for earth and this is the only spacecraft off the planet.
Studies show that people are far less likely to join a queue of four people than they are a queue of six. Yet, while we grumble about queues, they have a certain magnetism. During the Soviet era, people would join queues without even knowing what they were queuing for, only that it must be something good. The USSR had a three-queue system: one to see the goods, another to pay for them and the third to pick them up. Interestingly, this is exactly how Ikea works.
Former communist states still produce people who excel at queuing, so much so that a Russian economist considered lines of people to be a social problem, each year consuming about thirty billion hours. People waiting to pick up their flatpack gazebo in Argos on a busy Saturday might know what it feels like to wait that long.
The space between people in a queue varies around the world. In densely populated countries, inhabitants don't mind being squeezed up so close. So, next time someone is breathing down your neck in Supervalu, check if they're Dutch before asking them to back off.
A BRITISH CULTURAL historian, Joe Moran, has outlined the cultural history of the queue. During the 1950s it became the embodiment of social malaise and economic stagnancy, of the market not being able to supply demand. Queuing became associated with socialism in Britain, he argues, thanks to Winston Churchill. He coined the term "queuetopia" to describe a dystopia under a socialist government where there are shortages of everything. The Tories even managed a famous election poster in 1979, featuring a long queue and the slogan, Labour Isn't Working. Those featured, though, were 20 members of Hendon Young Conservatives and their parents photographed over and over.
In the 1980s and 1990s, RTÉ Radio One's Queuing For A Living captured the particular frustrations of daily survival in a country deep in recession. While the queue still has links with grinding bureaucracy today, whether it's waiting for a driver's licence or updating visas at the immigration offices, it is increasingly the purgatorial path to consumer heaven. We queue to withdraw money, and then we queue to spend it. The modern queuing system in which you pick a ticket and watch the number count up to yours is considered a great achievement of queue theory. But it won't get you your Argos flatpack gazebo any sooner.
Queues are unavoidable, so it's a matter of learning how to cope. There is a professional queuing service, Q4U, which will wait on your behalf, but it would be costly to call it every time you popped to the post office. You can try zen-like patience, but cunning is more fun.
Choosing a queue at the supermarket, for instance, involves speedy calculations of others' shopping baskets, shop assistant speed and how long the pensioner in front of you is likely to fumble for change. But remember: never, ever skip the queue. Do that and there'll be plenty of people lining up to put you back in your place.