Slashdot Mirror
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.
Suppose you're standing in line, and suddenly a whole line of people just slides into place right next to your line - at least as long as your line, in parallel, and apparently planning to enter into the venue in parallel.
Do you object? Do you assume that a second line has been "officially" been opened and you just missed out?
What if the new line of people has a lot more people than your line, and they start looking over at your line and saying "Hey - get to the back of the line! No cutting!" Does a fight break out - even if your line is obviously going to lose?
For full study results, see this month's Journal of American Douchebag Studies.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
is to pretend you're doing a study on line cutting, and interview someone near the front just as they start letting people in. Then release an actual study to prevent reprisals. Then profit?
Basic research doesn't always have immediate applications. Studying the psychology and sociology of lines is a hot topic among retailers though. How do you get people to line up like cattle and still have them feel like they're being treated reasonably well, and fairly? At least well enough that they come back. How does our society react to cheaters? The answer determines how many (and what kind) of cheaters will tend to exist. Are there differences between cultures or does our sense of fairness have some component that is innate to all humans?
Why does research have to have an immediately obvious purpose? I'm sure there have been millions of discoveries made by people just "messing around" with some aspect of science. This sort of thing is great in my opinion. If we only funded research that could be justified as "useful" the world would be a much more boring place.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
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.
stuff |
I think i learned this in high school when waiting to buy stuff at lunch. See a friend? Go say hi, start talking, act like you're not going to buy anything, and then when your friend gets to the front, look kind of surprised and "decide" to order something. Or instead, say "thanks for saving my spot", which people somehow value as a legitimate line technique. At a concert, try "hey man, wow, it took me forever to find parking!".
Now give me my god damn nobel prize.
What the hell is it with "researchers" doing projects that i figured out in high school?
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
Given the history of concentration camps, I'm not so sure I'd be all that eager to get in any line at all, let alone cut towards the front.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Oddly enough, when I read the title "How To Cut In Line and Not Get Caught", the first thing I thought was, "Does it involve explosions?".
The best way to cut in line without getting caught is to create a diversion, though I'll admit that explosions around a large crowd are probably not a good idea.... Controlled pyrotechnics, might do it, however, e.g. smoke bombs and/or carefully planted sparklers to make it look like an overhead electrical line is about to drop onto the crowd. A bunch of growling, barking dogs being chased down the street by their handlers might also do the trick. Other possibilities include a live bear, a cat fight between two hired actresses, or an alien spacecraft landing nearby... until somebody invents the SEP field, that is.
Of course, an ideal plan would include all of the above simultaneously. Sadly, if someone has time to plan such an elaborate diversion, he/she probably has time to get in line earlier, and as such, everything in this post is a terrible idea. Remember, kids, don't try this at home....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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.
no application, they just cut in line when the gov was handing out research grants
Best queue jumping story so far.
I was at Disneyland a couple of weeks ago and a woman was pushing through people in the Pirates line with her ~4 year old son. We let her go by because it looked like they were rejoining someone up front. Then we heard the woman say to a group in front of us, "Sorry, he doesn't know how to wait". Well, how the hell is he going to learn?
The article references "line Nazis" who mark everyone's hand with their position in line.
Obviously, you write a "1" on your hand, walk to the front of the line, then walk back along the line counting people. 30 peole back, you write "31" on someone's hand, hand them a marker and tell them to work their way backwards while you work your way forwards. You get to the front of the line, write "2" on the first guy's hand, nod with satisfaction at a job well done, and turn to face front.
If anyone objects, you just show them your hand...
It might look like I'm writing a reply to this post, but actually I'm just trying to get as close to the top of the page as possible.
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 worse when people start to give birth.
Why don't they just get a mage to polymorph them all into sheep like every other group that needs crowd control?
Cuting in line a problem? Ha! In South America we don't have such problem, as there aren't any lines. We replace a long period of diciplined standing time with a short period of mayhem until you get through the gate.
Hey somebody cut!
Ten years or so ago I bought an advance-purchase ticket to attend the London Boat Show. I arrived early. Together with many other overly-keen boat geeks, I was marshalled by an official into an ever-growing queue of advance-purchase ticket holders awaiting the opening of the gates. The queue was kept 30 yards off to one side to allow access to the ticket booths for those buying their tickets on the day. The many gates duly opened but our queue was kept in line and stationary by the uniformed official. Others were arriving, buying their tickets, and gaining immediate admission. One or two from our queue tried to make a break for it but were bullied sternly back into line by the queue-fascist. I refused to be shuffled back into line and caused the official to run around barking as if he were a sheep dog trying to gather a stray as I marched purposefully towards the gate. Realising I was a lost cause he returned to marshalling the line. I turned before passing through the gates to offer encouragement to others to disobey authority. I was surprised to be met by the hostile stares of the still-imprisoned.
Paul Beardsell
While it wasn't scientific research like this, your post reminds me of Velcro, which was invented after George de Mestral looked at burrs caught in his dog's hair.
Anyone who thinks this research is about learning how to cut in line needs to read the article. This is about what kinds of line-cutting annoys other line-goers the most.
Another way to look at this is as disturbing a stable system to learn about it. People line up in queues everywhere, and do it without even thinking. This generates several interesting questions: Why? (is it a learned action?) What causes people to dislike it when people cut?(from individual standpoints, someone cutting in line behind you doesn't affect you at all) Why do some people cut in line, and others wait in line? By watching what happens when these lines get undermined, you can learn a bit about why they're created, as well as the respective thought processes.
The point of the research is to try to understand the whole queueing process, not to learn how to be a dick.
Just because you had government sponsored dickery training and license at one time does not make it right.
It just makes your dickery portfolio thicker with dickery experience unavailable to the average "civilian" dick.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I have always found that the best way is to carry two cups of coffee, looking for someone near the front of the line who looks like they could use a cup (helps if it is cold out), offer them the second cup, strike up a brief conversation and slide through.
I just want to support the parent's point about retailing. They're really starting to get involved in the psychology of shopping. I'd highly recommend Why We Buy to anyone remotely interested in this stuff. It was actually required reading for one of my marketing classes.
But if we combined these two fields of research, perhaps we could build a more powerful bomb that only targets pricks who cut in line!
I'm so excited I just made water in my pantaloons!
And I'm jumping in beside a friend. It's less likely to attract scorn.
When I was in Spain I noticed that the Spanish don't know how to form lines. It drives the Brits nuts. Spaniards kind of flock, which completely disturbs the nice orderly line that the British want to form.
Cutting in line is easier than most people think. As long as you act normal and confident, virtually no one in our docile society will want to start an almost assuredly unpleasant confrontation.
First, don't get the impression that I'm someone who normally cuts in line. I'm the kind of person who, unless instructed otherwise, would probably wait patiently in an emergency room holding my own freshly-severed leg until called upon by a nurse or doctor. Now with that pleasant qualification out of the way...
The only time in my life I've ever intentionally cut in line was when I went with a group of four people to a night club. It was the only time I've ever been to a night club, in fact, and it must have been a pretty popular one because there were people lined up for about two blocks waiting to get in. But the guy who brought us there took one look at the line and said, "follow me." I knew what he was about to do, but I didn't feel it was right and was skeptical we'd get away with it anyhow. With all the people and the bouncers and probably even video cameras, we'd not simply be able to cut in line and not have anyone notice.
But cut we did. And we didn't just skip half the line or 3/4 of it, we went all the way to the front. I was waiting for one of the bouncers to say, "hey, you guys weren't here a second ago," but they never said anything. Waved their metal detectors around, stamped us all on the hand and let us in. After we were apparently in, I started wondering how the @#$% we just pulled that off. I can only imagine that it's because we didn't draw attention to ourselves and we didn't look suspicious whilst executing the cut. Perhaps because we acted like we were supposed to be cutting in line, everyone else assumed that we were entitled to. Like VIPs or something. Who knows.
By the time we were ready to leave, the line had moved forward enough that we would have been about 10 feet from the entrance had we stayed in line.
Well here in the SF area we have a system called FastTrack for going through bridge toll points without stopping using an electronic pass.
During peak hours the system gets jammed due to non-FastTrack drivers abusing the open lane to cut in line.
The system directors need this sort of study to understand that it is a serious problem that can create road-rage in addition to delays. And traffic engineers need to systematically analyze the behavior to determine what sort of countermeasures are needed to control it.
The Stanley Milgram paper about cutting in line is better written. This tastyresearch article which summarizes Milgram even has some lessons for queue jumpers.
It reminds me of Archimedes who, sitting in a tub, had an idea of a lightbulb above his head. Normaly you would say that it would be a stupid idea, having it when you are in a bath. Somehow the idea did catch on to have lightbulbs not only in the bathroom, but everywhere else as well.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Anyone else find it ironic that you have to buy a book about finding out why you buy books ?
What a depressingly stupid machine.
A more systematic approach to the same problem: http://www.spring.org.uk/2008/09/do-you-challenge-queue-jumpers-and-line.php