It’s amazing that I haven’t swung at someone in fury while having to nudge my way out of an elevator, although today I came close. It absolutely infuriates me that everyone here tries to push onto the elevator before the people in the elevator have had a chance to exit. It’s one of my pet peeves in the States too, but there is rarely occasion to set it off. Here though, the crowd-pushing makes the polite BART lines at the SF Embarcadero station seem like some sort of wildly successful social experiment via brain chip implant.
The push-your-way-to-the-front method seems to be the primary way of functioning here: waiting in line for lunch at the cafeteria, trying to get on/off an elevator, … Oh wait, did I say waiting in line? I meant waiting in the huddle of people all flinging funny money (pre-purchased coupons) in the face of the cafeteria servers. I’ll admit that I sometimes benefit from this disorder. Since I stick out like, well, like a white person in India, I get their attention without much effort and they’ll take my order before other people who have been standing there longer. At home, I would insist that the other people be served first, but here, that just wouldn’t make sense. I’d probably never get lunch.
I suppose I should mention that there are SOME situations where there are proper queues: at the department store, for example. Hm, no, wait, I’ve been in some department stores here where I’ve had to glare my way to the front counter. Ok, how about at the hotel lobby. Hm, well, the situation there is actually that there are so many unnecessary employees that there never is a need for an actual line. Ok, so maybe I can’t think of any, but I’m sure they exist….somewhere. Oh yeah, at the supermarket there was a line…I think.
It just goes against some of the core lessons from kindergarten—wait in line for your turn, share your toys, and don’t pick your nose in public. I know there’s nothing I can do about it – I can’t change the culture here, but nor can I seem to shake the value that such behavior is rude and impolite. I’ve been trying to keep my cool about this since I’ve gotten here, but it just drives me nuts. Sigh – something else to just “deal” with – which to me, means just another thing to try and block out.
Friday, September 09, 2005
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I like your theory about the brain chips in BART riders. Once when I was changing trains at (I think) 12th Street in Oakland, I saw a train waiting across the platform and ran to catch it, without thinking. A woman actually grabbed my arm as I was about to board and said, "Young lady, there is a LINE." I looked back, and sure enough there was. I apologized and tried to explain that I had just seen the train as I got off the other one and ran for it. She apparently was even more offended by my error than I was embarrassed by it. As soon as I said, "...and I didn't see the line," she said "Sure you didn't, bitch." Apparently her brain chip was missing the program for laid-back Bay Area attitude.
An English tourist I met waiting in line at the Uffizi in Florence told me that whenever an Englishman sees a line he gets in it, and then asks what it's for.
A friend who is starting her first year of teaching kindergarten, after 3 years of working with 5th graders, was shocked to have to teach her kids to line up. (She has taught them how to get in line and stay in line by telling them to act like a train--they put their hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them, make train noises, and off they go. Got plenty of laughs from the older kids at the school fire drill!)
Post a Comment