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How To Cut In Line and Not Get Caught
ewenc writes "A psychology study of hundreds of people waiting for front-row access to U2 concerts points to the best ways to cut in line and not get caught. 'Super-fans' are most irked by queue-jumpers. People were equally peeved whether someone cut in front or behind, and cutters who jumped beside a friend were less likely to attract scorn."
Preventing people like acting like pricks? Someone has to design the crowd control system, you know.
Oh great!
Now science is coming to the aid of line-cutters everywhere.. Though I'm usually not the type of person willing to wait in line for hours (regardless of the reason), seeing someone cutting into a line (however short it may be) really pisses me off.
It's one of those tell-tale things about a person's character. It implies, at the least, that the line-cutter lacks civility, or simply couldn't care less for "social norms". At the most, it's a sign of someone who simply thinks the "rules" do not apply to them, and everything that can get them ahead is fair game. In the latter case, it's also often accompanied with smugness: "stupid idiots waiting in line."
Sure, cutting a line is by no means a serious offense. And in most cases these lines are purely informal, so one could make the argument that cutting the line is a simple display of expedience, and that no rules have been broken.. But seeing as though many of society's rules are entirely unwritten (and often unspoken), such attitude is disruptive to say the least. Not trying to spread FUD here, but it's the kind of thing that when widespread, brings nothing but chaos into even the most simple of things.
Everyone knows there are a few ways to cut a line that work every time:
1) be in a wheelchair,
2) be carrying a screaming baby,
3) have "credentials" of some kind.
So if you have a press pass and a screaming baby and you're in a wheelchair, in theory you should be able to cut the restroom line in the last game of the world series, Boston at NYY, wearing a Boston hat, without getting a second look.
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Actually, you start your interviewing at the back of the line, moving forward as you go. Everyone knows you are just interviewing. Time it so that you are at the front when the gates open and just go in, continuing the current interview.
Murder everyone else in line.
You may get caught for the murders, but no one will ever know you cut in line.
The enemies of Democracy are
When I was at school there was an implicit code among students in which you could let all your friends get in the line AS LONG AS IT WAS IN FRONT OF YOU. Teachers couldn't understand how every student was fine with that, but since everyone accepted it and everyone benefited from it from time to time nobody ever complained.
Generally, I have more important things to care about than if I have to wait an extra minute and a half because 3 people just got in front of me.
Agreed.
How do you feel if its already been an hour, the line up is half way around the block, and people at the back will take an hour just to reach the position you are at now; and there is probably 50+ people and another half our so to wait in front of you.
And then over that period, half a dozen groups of 5+ show up and join their various friends in front of you (we're talking couples meeting other couples, or groups of friends meeting other groups of friends -- not a boyfriend joining his wife, or the driver joining his group after parking here. This effectively adds another 30 people in front of you, pushing you back another 30 minutes, while speeding them up about an hour and a half.
It gets ridiculous, and infuriating.
I remember when the Wii and PS3 were selling out at launch and people were lining up. Some stores instituted one of the best trends I've ever seen to defeat this, and some lines even SELF ORGANIZED into doing this; they had someone give out numbers to the people as they arrived. One person got one number. (And they were limiting it to one unit per customer.) So if a group sends someone over to line up a 1am, and then his 5 friends showed up at 5 minutes to opening, they couldn't effectively cut in and score a Wii or PS3 while guys that had been there for hours lost out entirely.