At Waterloo station there's a line of about 8 self-serve ticket machines. When it's busy, a line usually forms in front of each machine. The other day, there was a person at each machine, but only 7 of the 8 actually had a line, one had nobody waiting. I'm always extra careful to do what's right in these queue related situations, so I'm looking carefully, trying to figure out what to do.
The I spot Jeramiah Jobsworth , standing in between two machines. He was trying to start his own little mini "single line that feeds multiple machines" by standing in the middle. I could see he thought that he was going to use whichever of the two nearby machines was finished first, and I should stand behind him, and go after him no matter what. I laugh to myself and go over and stand next to him, prompting a lot of stink eye and much tutting. Finally, I turn and ask him in my best passive aggressive American accent "Which line are you in?" I knew that was going to make him lose it, and he started lecturing me on how his queuing system was the best and every Englishman would agree.... Obviously not, as the "one line, one machine" system had been overwhelmingly adopted in front of every other machine.
Made me think that British people actually are really crappy at queueing, contrary to the myth. They all individually think they know the rules, but they are all subtly different to each other. Just like they all think they know what "British Values" are, while completely ignoring the fact that the dark skinned Muslim family down the street has a completely different idea of "British Values", and most likely a different idea of how to stand in line.
If they do vote to leave the EU based on the spurious idea that then everyone will queue correctly, they are in for a big disappointment. Nigel Farage's family is still going to be part German, so there goes a common idea of British values down the plughole as well.
That's my rant done.
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