That reminds me of a story from a guy I worked with.
I'm not sure where he worked but it involved a queue of people. He said someone asked him if they could be given priority for their problem to be looked at before others in the queue. In other words jump to the head of the queue.
He said "Sure!" to the surprise of the person asking "But you do realize I will do that for anyone else who asks the same thing?"
So they person chose to remain in their place in line.
I'd give priority to people who show up.. I worked in a fast food place where the manager used to tell me the doordash and uber guys can wait but we had to first finish with the people who were in front of us.
Yep. It's just like saying "I just jump to the front of the queue because I'm minimizing time spent waiting". Yeah, for you, whereas everyone else has to wait N more seconds.
In my experience, clerks tend to circumvent the issue by simply yelling out, to no one in particular, something like "Next in line!"
I've also noticed the acquired habit in more experienced retail staff, when confronted with a queue of indeterminate order, to say, "I can help the next customer in line" and leaving implementation of the next method as an exercise for the customers themselves.
FWIW, I find the best arrangement is a Fry's style mega-queue with boundaries clearly defined by racks of candy, magazines, or other impulse-purchase crap that feeds into multiple registers.
I actually come across this scenario quite often in retail outlets with poorly designed queue layouts (e.g. an H&M with with 2-4 registers behind a long counter and a single ad-hoc queue lined up in front of one of them).
My reasoning is a little different (and a little more charitable I suppose in its generalization about human nature): I don't want to go step in front of the register with no one waiting in it because I don't want to look like a sociopathic jerk. I also assume that is why most people haven't done so.
At the same time, I know as soon as someone does step up and do it, people will grumble but the single ad hoc queue will redistribute itself into 3 more balanced queues. I'm usually waiting for someone else to be that sociopathic jerk.
What I wish is that the manager of the store gave a little more thought to this issue in the first place.
It's expected that you let the person who's been waiting the longest move there. That's why you'll hear the new cashier say "I can help the next person in line." I consider hopping over from the back of a line to be very rude.
The queue proposal sounds like a Monty Python skit.
If we adopt the rule that the next person to be served is the most recent person to join line, it's inevitable that a second line will form with people waiting to go to the first line and if someone tries to go to bypass the second line and go directly to the first line, the crowd in the first line will direct their rage at this person and compel him or her to queue in the second line - it's just as if there were only one line and the person had cut in that.
But still, it's not like everyone in the line failed to consider queue jumping. It's an obvious strategy, they just forgo it for everyone's benefit. Hence the outrage.
It really is different from jumping a queue, though. You have no means to call that person out.
In a queue, you can appeal to the emotions of a clerk, attendent, or some other agent with power. Further, if no power agent exists or is sporadic enough that they virtually don't exist (like, say, police on the same roadway you describe) then the action of calling out devolves to simple game theory in which the best mode of action is to simply not participate.
I challenge you to change your mindset:
>take advantage of 2-second gaps
that 2-second gap is simply a buffer. when buffers are filled do we call it 'being taken advantage of' or do we simply empty the buffer and continue our routine?
I thought he was going to say that each new person goes in front of the person currently being served. This would motivate people to complete their orders as fast as possible.
> the person offering is supposed to wait a while, then decide who to give it to.
Some people may be more needy or deserving?
Or, if you strictly followed first come/first serve, some people might abuse the platform by constantly being "first!!!" on everything. Having a delay makes that harder to get away with.
> Honestly, I genuinely find it quite rude when people do that as you lose all sense of how many people are before you and when you'd be up next.
This is ridiculous, you can simply go ask how many people are ahead of you if you want to know your place in the queue, which is the proper way to do it.
Queuing isn't the objectively correct way to wait for something, it's a specific cultural norm. Many cultures don't queue at all. Attitudes to queue-jumping vary widely, from being an immense faux pas to practically a sport. The British and Russians have a penchant for queuing-without-queuing, with each person keeping a mental note of the order in which everyone is waiting to be served.
I'm not sure where he worked but it involved a queue of people. He said someone asked him if they could be given priority for their problem to be looked at before others in the queue. In other words jump to the head of the queue.
He said "Sure!" to the surprise of the person asking "But you do realize I will do that for anyone else who asks the same thing?"
So they person chose to remain in their place in line.
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