The Wit’s Guide To Queues

Or, what are you waiting for?

Alexei Sondukov’ 1986 painting The Queue was a prime opportunity for Soviet ladies to show off their leather boots.

We live in the age of the celebratory queue. In the bad old days, people were forced to stand in line for necessities. Now, they thrill to line up for luxuries.

“To make someone wait: the constant prerogative of power, age-old pastime of humanity.”
— Roland Barthes

Why did we rediscover patience? Jonah Weiner of Blackbird Spyplane recently waited 90 minutes for baked goods in Oakland, California, which gave him plenty of time to formulate a grand unified theory for what he calls the QTBAT (Queue to buy a Treat), or “business friendly loitering with intent to purchase.” His four trenchant explanations:

1. It’s an egalitarian experience in our increasingly stratified society.

2. It’s meaningful, as measured by the fact everyone else is doing it.

3. It’s not on your phone. Hurrah for the meatspace!

4. It’s communal. We used to go to temple; now we go for bagels.

“There is something wrong when you wait in line thirty minutes to get a hamburger that was cooked for ninety seconds an hour ago.”
— Lewis Grizzard

The English must be given credit for their exceptional queuing ability, a talent the BBC dates back to the 1940s. But then, they have a universally understood word that works as a verb and noun. Queuing may be descriptive and prescriptive, ensuring future generations know that if you dare cut the queue, you’ll be on the next slow boat to Australia (where life expectancy, average income, and marsupial concentration is significantly better because crime pays.)

“An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one.”
— George Mikes

It’s widely said that Disney has the best queues, as old Walt knew that was how his guests would spend most of their time in his theme park. And so he entertains you in line, never lets you see exactly how long it is, and gives you a slightly inflated estimate of how long it will take so you think you’ve beat the system. But that was before Lightning Lanes, the expensive queue-jumping pass that Disney resisted for years (to paraphrase a cricket, when you wish upon a star, your net worth shouldn’t matter). Now that this three-fingered white-glove service has generated roughly a billion dollars for the House of Mouse, there’s no going back. Meanwhile, Walt’s corpse waits patiently on dry ice below the Pirates of the Caribbean ride until medical science finds a way to revive him. (Not really.)

“The older we get, the fewer things seem worth waiting in line for.”
— Will Rogers

In the middle period between post-war scarcity queuing and the modern celebratory queue (which may have begun with the first iPhone in 2007), it seemed like the existence of perpetual lines said something important about a city. Montreal pretty much always had a queue in front of Schwartz’s Delicatessen, even if you could get a reasonable facsimile right across the street at The Main, RIP (Rest in Pickles). But what did people line up for in Toronto? Maybe Dutch Dreams ice cream on a summer night, but beyond that? Now, denizens of these cities and most others can spend their leisure time waiting for all manner of treats. We did it! Once again, hurrah for the meatspace.

“The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.”
— H.L. Mencken

You know the rule of thumb about how you should read 100 pages minus your age of any new book, given that your reading time is dwindling with each passing year? The same goes for lineups, though we need a formula. Wait for 60 minutes minus your age, perhaps? So if you’re in your golden years, they ought to wait for you. Next week?

Each month my paid subscribers and I exchange some of the best things we’ve read, seen, heard, and experienced in a special issue called Get Wit Picks. This week, a sampling from Futility Closet, the book of the excellent blog:

What do you get when you drop a piano down a mine shaft?
A-flat minor.

Which is the family-friendly ancestor of Kendrick Lamar Duckworth’s line about Aubrey “Drake” Graham:

Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A minor.

More of this flotsam and jetsam coming soon in the June edition!

Get Wit Quick No. 375 wants to know: What do you happily wait for? Tell me in the comments below. Also, thank you for last week’s contributions of how you respond to an everyday sorry! More on that project coming soon. The mascot of this newsletter is Magnus the magpie, named after the magician from the Deptford Trilogy. The title font is Vulf Sans, the official typeface of the band Vulfpeck. The inferior-for-now and still free AI replicant is at getwitquicker.replit.app. The book was Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting. Just this once, you can jump to the front of the line to tap the ❤️ below.