Queueing is being rebranded as a nice way to meet people. But that depends on what you’re waiting for | Emma Beddington
It’s a short step from laughing in the line for artisan pastries to grimly waiting to buy a loaf of sliced white. Are we just
It’s a short step from laughing in the line for artisan pastries to grimly waiting to buy a loaf of sliced white. Are we just rehearsing for food shortages? It’s hot – fancy a frozen yoghurt? Probably not, given that ice-cream exists, but a New York Times reporter recently queued for an hour to experience the city’s fro-yo craze with 74 other patient souls, long enough, she wrote, to “feel affection for my cluster of line, the kind of camaraderie you develop with fellow passengers on a delayed flight”.
The yoghurt, while fine, was emphatically not worth the wait. That’s surely also true of the UK’s current slew of viral bakeries, pizza joints and, improbably, baked potato spots. Can carbs really be that good? Maybe, but I’ll never find out: reaching the head of an interminable queue only for the person in front of you to take the last treat is psychological violence I won’t put myself through, and queueing at a mayonnaise vending machine – another real NYC phenomenon is my idea of hell.
But queues are everywhere now. Even in my hometown of York, where formerly the only people queueing were tourists waiting to enjoy the stench of rotting herring and latrine at the Jorvik Viking Centre (or to patronise our sui generis tearoom, Bettys), locals line up at brunch spots and bakeries. How and why have queues, previously an occasional annoyance, become ubiquitous?
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