People are always saying that queueing is a terribly British thing, so it comes as no surprise that the very people telling you this are in fact British themselves (and all neatly lined-up in a queue). Queueing is the physical equivalent of being put on hold; you never choose to participate in it and the other 15 people in front of you seem to irritate the hell out of you - despite not knowing a single thing about them. There's a simple reason for this: those people in front of you aren't people anymore, they don't even pertain to our species. They're now a super-evolved life form collectively known as a queue.
Queues come in all shapes and sizes, but their preferred habitat has been observed as being indoors, generally in shops, and their diet suggests they feed on time and patience.
It appears that despite their sole intention of creating order and fairness, a queue can be one of the most stressful places to be. The simple fact is that queueing irritates us. This may explain why you never feel like you're in the queue yourself; rather, the queue is in your way. An obstacle that you must overcome or defeat (depending on how heroic you're feeling when paying for your weekly shop).
So, why do so many of us get so agitated, annoyed and frustrated when queueing? It's like we suddenly feel the need to rush, even when we have nowhere to rush to. Some people, on the other hand, have found queueing to be a rather relaxing/therapeutic process, and take on an almost meditative state when all hell appears to be breaking loose around them. They use this pocket of time to reach for deep/inquisitive subjects - the universe; its creation; our existence; our creation, when all the people around them insist on thinking about one thing and one thing only: QUEUEING.
Next time you're in a queue, no matter how close you are to the end of your tether, remember that for every queue there is a poor shop assistant trying desperately to dissipate it as quickly as possible. Stay calm. Breathe. And bear in mind that any rash decisions could cost you the valuable time you've invested and, ultimately, prove counterproductive. Never forget that us Brits are also famed for being extremely tolerant, so you wouldn't want to step out of line now, would you?
