Learning to Queue

Arriving in a new country, the things you notice first are the differences.
Queuing is a peculiarly Anglo-Saxon habit, but the rugby scrum, common in most busy shops and banks here, is excessive even by Mediterranean standards and takes some getting used to.
Having the sort of bar presence that risks me dying of thirst in a pub, I got used to taking sandwiches and a couple of bottles of water just to go and pay in a cheque at the bank, but have since lowered my standards and learned to queue jump with the best.
One of the most crowded places is my local post office. Not only do we go there to send letters and parcels, it’s the place where telephone bills are paid, residency permits renewed and all manner of government forms obtained. Getting to the front needs broad shoulders (to block those coming behind), a walking stick (not for pity, but to beat others out of the way – well an old lady did it to me once), no shame and absolutely no sense of fair play.
Surprisingly then they introduced a take-a-ticket-and-wait-for-your-number-to-be-called queuing system recently. And guess what, the Beirutis took to it as if they’d been genetically programmed, just needing for the sleeping bit of DNA to be awoken by the little flashing number screen. It became a topic of conversation amongst those now waiting with what passes for patience here. Instead of the usual jostling and pushing there was chatter and even occasional smiles. OK, at one staff change over the new server didn’t understand the tickets and tried to go back to the old system, but a supervisor spoke gently to her and showed her how to press the button which advanced the aforementioned number screen, so even that little incident passed off without much of a hitch.
Queuing by numbers, pay and display on the streets of Beirut, my local pub called the Greedy Goose, after a while it’s the similarities that strike you.