Beware flouting the unwritten rules for lineups

The Scottish bus driver chewed me out when I flashed my day pass and stepped around the elderly lady still fumbling for coins in her purse. Duly chagrined, I retreated behind the lady to wait my turn.

Lineups have their own varying cultures, and you flout the unwritten rules at your peril.

In Ottawa, everyone would have done as I’d done on that Edinburgh bus – step around the lady to keep the line moving efficiently. Instead, after she’d slowly deposited her fare, packed up her purse and moved to sit down, I stepped forward to show him my pass again. He treated me to another dirty look before I hightailed it down the aisle to find a seat.

That and the Spanish cafeteria incident taught me that the culture of lineups – called queues in many places – can be quite different. Travel guides don’t usually give you any tips for navigating all the lineups you encounter: at airports, bank machines, inside banks, grocery stores, cafeterias, post offices, museums, tourist attractions, movie theatres and more. (Remember going to movies?!)  

Of course, Covid has disrupted lineup culture everywhere. Now, the rules are often written down and even posted: stand six feet apart, wear a mask, Purell your hands, be kind to each other. Not only that, many larger department and grocery stores began a single-line policy so people don’t have to mill about guessing which line is the shortest and hopping from line to line to hopefully get through faster. Customers appreciate the efficiency, which is generally the goal in North American lineups.

But not everywhere. Efficiency was also my downfall in the Spanish cafeteria.

We were staying in the Seminario Menor Albergue (like a monastery) in Santiago de Compostela, after finishing the Camino in Spain. We had eaten breakfast in the basement cafeteria, and I went back to get a second coffee. As I entered the long U-shaped food-selection area, a group of four was stalled at the first stop. They didn’t have their trays and couldn’t decide what to eat, so I went around them, around the bend in the U to near the end where you ordered coffee from the cashier.

“Un café, por favor,” I said politely.

Rapid-fire Spanish issued from the cashier’s mouth, along with exuberant pointing at the other people. I didn’t understand what she was trying to say at first, although it slowly dawned on me.

“Perro, quisierra solo un café,” I said, explaining that I wanted only a coffee, and finishing in English since I couldn’t find the Spanish words: “and they don’t know what they want.”

Didn’t matter. Just like on the Edinburgh bus, I was banished to the back of the line to wait my turn. Efficiency was not the priority. The cashier stood there doing nothing while the people slowly made their way toward her. They paid, then I stepped up to order my coffee again.

After that, I did not step ahead in lines. But later in Portugal, I learned that you can’t step ahead even when there is no line.

I went into the village post office in Alvor, in Portugal’s southern Algarve region, to buy international stamps. Two clerks were each serving a customer, so I browsed through the books and souvenirs that post offices also sell there, rehearsing my request in Portuguese in my head. When the two customers left the post office together, I approached one of the clerks and asked for two stamps. But she shook her head and asked for my number.

“Meu numero?” I didn’t know what she meant.

She pointed to a number-dispensing machine by the doorway, which I had not seen as I entered. I was still the sole customer; no one else had come in. With raised eyebrows, I walked across the empty post office, pressed the button, retrieved my paper number – #52 – took it back to the desk and gave it to the clerk. With my number in hand, she was all smiles. She even gave me an impromptu Portuguese pronunciation lesson.

Lineups are challenging, especially when you’re in a country where your language skills are equivalent to a four-year-old’s. But learning to navigate these sometimes intriguingly mystifying situations is all part of the charm of travel – learning that the rest of the world doesn’t do things like we do at home and that their systems can be better. Personal, unhurried service can be kinder, more compassionate than efficiency, especially for elderly ladies on buses.

Take the Costa Rican post office, for example. I popped in to the village post office in Uvita hoping to quickly buy two international stamps for two post cards before our bus arrived in 20 minutes. A few other people milled about haphazardly, not in an orderly line, but I thought I’d have time. It turned out the post office is also the local travel agency, rental car agency and tourist office. The clerk was serving a man who wanted to rent a car and drive somewhere that must have been complicated since it required explanations a million times over.

While everyone waited patiently, a postal delivery man entered with some boxes and a clipboard. Now, in most places the clerk would have given that man priority, turning from the rental car man to accept the boxes and sign on the clipboard so the fellow postal official could get on his way. But no. The delivery man waited patiently with the rest of us. Well, I exaggerate. I was not patient, but I’d learned my lesson elsewhere so I feigned patience while glancing out the window to see if our bus had arrived.

Finally, the rental car guy left clutching his insurance papers, the clerk dealt quickly with two others, and then it was my turn.

“Sorry, we’re all out of international stamps,” she replied in English to my Spanish request. My disappointment must have showed on my face, because she offered to take my post cards, affix the stamps when they arrived and mail them for me, as long as I would pay in advance.

Wow! What a kind offer. That would never happen at Canada Post! Although I had doubts about whether it would work, I paid for the stamps, surrendered my post cards and left with two minutes to spare for the bus. Indeed, the post cards arrived at their Canadian destinations a few weeks later.

Our favourite technique for figuring out lineup culture is ‘watch and learn,’ especially in grocery stores where we often find ourselves early on in any new country. We purposely choose the longest line so we have time to figure out whether you can pay with credit cards, where to stash your basket, whether you use your own bags, whether you bag your own groceries, and whether the cashier weighs your produce or you should have had it weighed and tagged in the produce department. (In Boquete, Panama, the cashier sent me back to get my onion weighed by the produce clerk, who slapped a price sticker right on the onion skin.) Until you’re in another country, you don’t realize all the rituals you take for granted at home.

We employed the watch-and-learn technique in Argentina in the small-town Larroque bank when we wanted to exchange American dollars for Argentinian pesos. We noticed a red number flashing in a box on the wall, but couldn’t see where to get a number. I asked another customer, but she indicated there weren’t any. The system wasn’t being used, but we weren’t sure what to do. Everyone sat around on chairs in the wide space, with no apparent line. Two bank clerks sat at desks on the far left. Occasionally, people disappeared into a small room on the right. So we found chairs and waited and watched.

Every once in a while, a bell dinged and someone went into the small room. But two other people near us were keeping a close eye on the desks. We soon realized that everyone knew who had come into the bank before them, and they were taking their turns.

“I think it’s our turn,” I finally whispered to Bill.

“I’m not going over there,” he replied, hesitant we’d get a lecture from someone.

“I’m pretty sure it’s our turn.” I slowly stood and approached the desk with a smile. No one reacted in horror, so Bill walked over too. The bank clerk smiled back and I cheered inwardly. We had correctly broken the unwritten code.

I’ve come to realize that we’ll never know all the myriad lineup cultures before encountering them. And that’s okay. It’s enough to know that customs differ, you must watch and learn, and you must be patient; trying to hurry is futile.  

And don’t ever step ahead of elderly ladies.