Speaker 1: I'm Dessa, and this is deeply human? Why you do
Speaker 1: what you do before you were old enough to know
Speaker 1: any real swear words. Some of the spiciest epithets hold
Speaker 1: that your peers may have sounded like this, Hey, no
Speaker 1: blood gen Alternately, no cutting in line, no skipping, no budding.
Speaker 1: If you grew up in Ohio, you might have called
Speaker 1: it ditching. In the UK, que jumping or barging. In Brazil,
Speaker 1: you pierced the line Arkansas. You broke it for pint
Speaker 1: sized tweakers and the grown ups they turned into. The
Speaker 1: standing line evokes strong feelings about fairness, about justice. But
Speaker 1: why now is the time to insert your mouth guards,
Speaker 1: because we are going into the dark heart of this
Speaker 1: standing line, a place full of violence, sex, power, struggles,
Speaker 1: and time under bits. When you're surfing, there is a
Speaker 1: very distinct queue for the wave. Once you start to
Speaker 1: learn the rhythms of it, you can see there is
Speaker 1: a line for the wave, and if you break that
Speaker 1: or do what's called dropping in on somebody, that can
Speaker 1: lead to fist fights. That's Jason Farman when not surfing,
Speaker 1: he's a psychologist who studies how humans wait. Well, technically,
Speaker 1: I guess he's still a psychologist. While he was surfing,
Speaker 1: the wave will break at a particular point, and if
Speaker 1: you're too far to the left or too far to
Speaker 1: the right, you won't be able to catch that wave.
Speaker 1: So people know where that point is, and then the
Speaker 1: next person in line kind of drifts over to that
Speaker 1: exact point. But sometimes somebody's on the wave already, somebody
Speaker 1: who's new will drop in on that person further down
Speaker 1: the wave and cause that person to fall off. So
Speaker 1: there's a very clear hierarchy when it comes to waiting
Speaker 1: in line for waves. I was next and you have
Speaker 1: to So then what is that confrontation actually look like?
Speaker 1: Is it just like are you kidding me? Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: been in those kind of encounters before. Where as soon
Speaker 1: as you start to paddle back out to the waves,
Speaker 1: there's there's an argument, usually like you broke decorum, you
Speaker 1: broke the rules, you dropped in on me. I bet
Speaker 1: that's not the words that are used. No, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a little yes, you broke decorum. I'm very disappointed in you. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it doesn't quite sound like that. But can it actually escalate?
Speaker 1: I mean, two fists being drowned? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not uncommon beach bronzed vegans in hand to hand
Speaker 1: combat in the warm sands of Paradise. Even surfers like
Speaker 1: freak out when they think that they've been skipped, which
Speaker 1: can feel like a disproportionate response because it's not like
Speaker 1: the ocean is out of waves. There's another one right
Speaker 1: behind you. Jason has studied weighting behaviors all over the
Speaker 1: world to see what we're really doing when we're in line.
Speaker 1: What's interesting for me is that we all tend to
Speaker 1: kind of despise waiting. We tend to want to use
Speaker 1: our time well. But within cultures, what waiting looks like
Speaker 1: is dramatically different. In Japan, there are very strict rules
Speaker 1: around waiting. As you approach the Tokyo Metro, there are
Speaker 1: even little lines that everybody is supposed to line up on,
Speaker 1: and anybody who breaks those norms it is very frowned upon.
Speaker 1: And then you see that in the wake of something
Speaker 1: like the Tohoku earthquake and the Fukushima crisis, where people
Speaker 1: queued up for rations of food and water, and the
Speaker 1: lines would be just tremendously long, but they were very orderly,
Speaker 1: very single file. There was no disruption to that because culturally,
Speaker 1: lining up comes with very specific notions of decorum to
Speaker 1: maintain the cultural identity of the people in Japan. In
Speaker 1: some Latin countries, a customer entering a shop just calls out, ultimo,
Speaker 1: who's last. Then there's no need to stand in line,
Speaker 1: because everybody has made mental note of their position in
Speaker 1: the sequence. In Britain, where I'm recording this podcast, the
Speaker 1: ability to form meat waiting lines is a point of
Speaker 1: national pride, which I find both endearing and totally bizarre.
Speaker 1: The author George mccash wrote, an Englishman, even if he's alone,
Speaker 1: forms an orderly queue of one. In the US, feverish
Speaker 1: capitalists that we are, we get a special variety of
Speaker 1: line standard. The hired gun meet Robert Samuel's who waits
Speaker 1: in line for a living, queuing on behalf of his
Speaker 1: clients for Saturday Night Live tickets, Limited edition merged book
Speaker 1: signings by heavy hitters. I've met Hillary Clinton, I've met
Speaker 1: Michelle Obama, I've met Bernie Sanders, I've met Jimmy Carter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that that's a cool part. And sometimes if the
Speaker 1: customer only wants one book and it's two poor persons,
Speaker 1: and I score, and I get one for me. So
Speaker 1: before the pandemic closed Broadway productions, I met with Robert
Speaker 1: in Manhattan waiting for Hamilton's tickets, and when I texted
Speaker 1: him to arrange our meeting, I asked for a photos
Speaker 1: so that I'd be able to recognize him on the street,
Speaker 1: and he just wrote back, I'll be the first one
Speaker 1: in line, which seemed like such a total boss move
Speaker 1: for a professional line water. I asked if his job
Speaker 1: made him better or worse at waiting in his own
Speaker 1: personal lines. If I'm going to wait in line for
Speaker 1: a customer, yeah, I'm happy. It's cool. I know I
Speaker 1: got paid for it, But if it's something I had
Speaker 1: to do for myself, there are times, well, I'll hire
Speaker 1: my own line to this God. I love that Robert
Speaker 1: is intimately familiar with all the codified rules of waiting
Speaker 1: in line and how serious we can get when they're broken.
Speaker 1: There was one instance where I was waiting for a
Speaker 1: pair of Nikes and a bunch of people in front
Speaker 1: of me decided to put chairs down and leave like
Speaker 1: maybe fifteen or so chairs in front of me, and
Speaker 1: it was by myself, and then people came behind me,
Speaker 1: and they're like other people started arriving and they're asking, uh,
Speaker 1: what's with the chairs? And Robert says, oh, those people
Speaker 1: just want to grab food. And the new arrivals asked when, like,
Speaker 1: what time do they leave? And I'm being honest, so
Speaker 1: they left about an hour hour and a half ago.
Speaker 1: Um I said, oh no, if this, we're not we're
Speaker 1: not tolerating this. They start clearing the chairs, and I
Speaker 1: knew when the other group came back that holy hell
Speaker 1: is going to break out. So I called nine one
Speaker 1: one and said, please get to this block because all
Speaker 1: hell's gonna break loose when these other guys come back.
Speaker 1: And I didn't want to be a part of it.
Speaker 1: And I knew, I knew what it had the potential
Speaker 1: to turn into, which it could have got physical. Robert
Speaker 1: is essentially a mercenary here, but there is still a
Speaker 1: code of conduct. Also. The chair stuff, it's it's just
Speaker 1: not very civilized. Now. That's just being inconsiderate and you're
Speaker 1: having an inanamant object hold your spot and think you
Speaker 1: can come back at any time. That's just rude and disrespectful.
Speaker 1: It doesn't count, and it just goes against the sperrit
Speaker 1: of line sitting. If there's any you know that makes
Speaker 1: any sense. Lines are supposed to work first come, first served,
Speaker 1: which makes them fundamentally egalitarian. Everyone has to wait their
Speaker 1: turn no matter who you are, so it isn't just
Speaker 1: an inconvenience when someone cuts in front of you. It's
Speaker 1: a moral transgression. In some cases, even hiring a line
Speaker 1: sitter compose a real problem. Years ago, CNN reported that
Speaker 1: line sitters, some homeless, were being paid to hold spots
Speaker 1: for lobbyists to gain access to congressional hearings. In two
Speaker 1: thousand fifteen, the Supreme Court of the United States banned
Speaker 1: lawyers from hiring line sitters to hold spots in the
Speaker 1: lawyer's only line to hear oral arguments. As surfing psychologist
Speaker 1: Jason explains, people in power can buy themselves better shorter
Speaker 1: weights they're is a meme that's been going around It
Speaker 1: as a picture Beyonce, and it says, why aren't you Beyonce?
Speaker 1: She has the same twenty four hours you do, um,
Speaker 1: and I don't think that's accurate at all. We all
Speaker 1: do have objectively twenty four hours, but we are often
Speaker 1: forced to use those hours in very distinct ways. I
Speaker 1: think about people who have very long commutes to their
Speaker 1: second job, and time is very different for them. The
Speaker 1: people in a grocery store line who have to, you know,
Speaker 1: use food stamps or cash and count coupons. They're using
Speaker 1: their time at that check outstand very differently than I
Speaker 1: have to. I don't know this for sure, but I
Speaker 1: have the strong suspicion that Beyonce doesn't spend too much
Speaker 1: time in line. Yeah, exactly. I think if you look
Speaker 1: at lines in general and think about how people are
Speaker 1: afforded the ability to skip the line or to reduce
Speaker 1: the line, you can see some really interesting power disparities
Speaker 1: going on. Who can afford two board, you know, with
Speaker 1: pre boarding or platinum atis? And I sometimes do it,
Speaker 1: and I feel such class skilled, feel so humiliated, right O, God,
Speaker 1: do you do it? Can? I ask? No? I don't.
Speaker 1: I wish I did. No, you don't. I take the
Speaker 1: overhead compartment, but Jason takes the high road. Social class
Speaker 1: can effect not just how long we wait, but how
Speaker 1: much that waiting sucks. Take for example, the research on
Speaker 1: the waiting rooms in Buenos Aires and in other parts
Speaker 1: of South America. Were welfare recipients queue for their benefits,
Speaker 1: they might talk to somebody to say I'm here to
Speaker 1: pick up my check, and they'll have them wait in
Speaker 1: the waiting room, and there's no feedback in the space.
Speaker 1: You know, at the Department of Motor Vehicles, you take
Speaker 1: a number and you have a sense of maybe where
Speaker 1: that number falls in a queue. There's none of that
Speaker 1: in this space. Not knowing how long the line is
Speaker 1: or your position in it makes the whole experience worse.
Speaker 1: That's why we prefer a progress bar on a computer
Speaker 1: to that spinning beach ball of death, because uncertainty creates anxiety.
Speaker 1: There are two few chairs, so people are often standing around,
Speaker 1: their kids crawling around on the ground. So it's a
Speaker 1: space where it emphasizes your lack of agency and also
Speaker 1: emphasizes your position within the society that somebody else is
Speaker 1: controlling your time. The way we structure our waiting lines
Speaker 1: reinforces who is considered unimportant, whose experience really just doesn't
Speaker 1: matter because they're broke or otherwise powerless. Conversely, the waiting
Speaker 1: experience can also be designed to elevate the people in line.
Speaker 1: Here is Dick Larson of m I T, also known
Speaker 1: as Doctor Q, for his work on queuing theory, describing
Speaker 1: a top of the line line. There used to be
Speaker 1: something called the Manhattan Savings Bank in New York. People
Speaker 1: would come in over their lunch breaks, which created a
Speaker 1: big midday rush and a bunch of complaints. So then
Speaker 1: one of the managers thought, I'm going to hire a
Speaker 1: concert pianist from am to one thirty pm every day.
Speaker 1: They hired the concert pianist, the complaints about the delays
Speaker 1: dropped to zero. Customers were seeing waiting in the lobby
Speaker 1: after their banking was over until the current musical piece
Speaker 1: was completed. And I read in the New York Times
Speaker 1: that some a guy was arrested for selling tickets five
Speaker 1: dollars a piece to get into the bank lobby. One
Speaker 1: particular American company has really delved into both the math
Speaker 1: and psychology of standing lines. If you visited one of
Speaker 1: Disney's theme parks, you've probably seen the fruits of their efforts.
Speaker 1: The imagineers can throw a hell of a line, and
Speaker 1: here's Dr Q on Disney's Mastery. One example is the
Speaker 1: Q channel. You never can see the length of the queue.
Speaker 1: The line is chunked up into little bite sized segments,
Speaker 1: so you're not daunted by how long the tucker is.
Speaker 1: They lined the Q channels with amusements. Don't look now,
Speaker 1: but here comes Goofy. Be cool, back cool, stay cool, Goofy.
Speaker 1: That's the law you. They might have a sign out
Speaker 1: say if the line is out there here, you might
Speaker 1: expect an hour of delay, but they intentionally pad the times,
Speaker 1: so forty five minutes later, husband says to the wife, Honey,
Speaker 1: we're fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. The lines at Disney
Speaker 1: are so good that gaggles of kids think they're already
Speaker 1: on the ride, which reveals the fact that are our
Speaker 1: real problem with most cues isn't the time we spend waiting.
Speaker 1: It's the idle boredom. If you're relentlessly entertained, you'll happily
Speaker 1: spend most of a vacation day standing in line. Let's
Speaker 1: now take leave of our costumed princesses sweating into their
Speaker 1: polyester corsets and meet another sort of protagonist, Trader Joe.
Speaker 1: Trader Joe's is a grocery chain in the US. I
Speaker 1: write hard for their crunchy lentil curls. They're known for
Speaker 1: their store brand organics and the epic lines, like the
Speaker 1: entire floor plan is sometimes occupied by a single line
Speaker 1: snaking through every aisle, there is an employee paid to
Speaker 1: hold a sign on an eight foot poll that reads
Speaker 1: end of the line. Experts call this a serpentine line.
Speaker 1: It's long, single file and folds back on itself, and
Speaker 1: it's actually preferable to the parallel lines you see at
Speaker 1: most grocery stores for two reasons. First, a serpentine line
Speaker 1: ensures first come are first served, whereas with parallel lines
Speaker 1: you're plagued by that anxiety the other line is moving faster. Second,
Speaker 1: a serpentine line is good at distributing any delays, so
Speaker 1: if a register goes down, traffic is simply rerouted to
Speaker 1: the other stations, as opposed to leaving a single line
Speaker 1: of stalled out customers boiling with enough grocery rage to
Speaker 1: air fry their lintil curls and their own cupped hands.
Speaker 1: Before doing this podcast, I hated serpentine lines. Entering Trader
Speaker 1: Joe's I thought, are you kidding me? But now, knowing
Speaker 1: what I do about queuing theory, I'm like, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: these guys know what's up. Where's the poll guy at
Speaker 1: the end of the line thing. Now, let's take this
Speaker 1: shopping cart underwater. Okay, easy, careful, please, Those are those
Speaker 1: eggs in there. Some of them are green with red spots.
Speaker 1: Others are orange with neon blue stripes. And they've got
Speaker 1: a bit of an underbyte, so you'll see that their
Speaker 1: little teeth on the lower jaws sticking up. That's Marry
Speaker 1: and Wong. She's a behavioral ecologist who studies little tropical
Speaker 1: fish called gobies. I have colleagues that have told me
Speaker 1: that they think they're the ugliest official but for me,
Speaker 1: I just think they're beautiful. For it's like they're so
Speaker 1: ugly that they're beautiful. Marian lurks around coral reefs spying
Speaker 1: on fish for a living, and she's discovered that the
Speaker 1: social order of the gobies involves a strictly controlled waiting line.
Speaker 1: I'm British, so I know a lot about queues. We
Speaker 1: spend a lot of our time in queues, I told you,
Speaker 1: and these fish do a similar thing. But what they're
Speaker 1: queuing for is access to very limited breeding positions. So
Speaker 1: in their group, breeding is monopolized by just the most
Speaker 1: dominant male and female, and everyone else in a group
Speaker 1: is reproductively suppressed. So they're just not allowed to breed,
Speaker 1: and so what happens is is they're queuing. They're waiting
Speaker 1: for the dominance to disappear or die, and once that happens,
Speaker 1: the next largest non breeder will then ascend in that
Speaker 1: hierarchy to become the new breeder, and everyone else ascends
Speaker 1: one rank up. In the realm of the gobies, only
Speaker 1: the homecoming King and Queen are have in any sex,
Speaker 1: and every other fish is in a line of succession
Speaker 1: behind the power couple, waiting for one of them to
Speaker 1: get eaten by a predator or wander off, or to die,
Speaker 1: and every fish knows exactly where they are in line.
Speaker 1: And Marian and a team No. Two. Because each fish
Speaker 1: controls its body size to make sure they're a little
Speaker 1: smaller than the fish in front of them, they essentially
Speaker 1: diet to make sure they maintain their exact position in queue.
Speaker 1: So when they first come into a coral, they're just
Speaker 1: really tiny babies. They've just spent three weeks in the
Speaker 1: ocean is larvae, and then they settle into a coral,
Speaker 1: so they're automatically right at the end of the queue,
Speaker 1: and gradually, over time they might be able to ascend
Speaker 1: in rank, and every time they do they grow just
Speaker 1: incrementally a bit more? So? If I'm rank one and
Speaker 1: my dominant gets eaten, how long does it take for
Speaker 1: me to develop into the dominant? You know, behavi really immediately?
Speaker 1: Why you will start to notice that the subordinate is
Speaker 1: just really happy, and they'll just be a little more aggressive.
Speaker 1: They will keep checking up on their own suborders to
Speaker 1: make sure that you know they're in their proper place
Speaker 1: in the coral. They may also start to flirt a
Speaker 1: little bit with the remaining breeder. If I just got
Speaker 1: promoted to breeding gobie, what does my flirtation look like
Speaker 1: with the other dominant? Um? You tend to sort of
Speaker 1: swim up to them, um and wiggle. Okay, not safe
Speaker 1: for work, Let's move on, Family shall, Family Shall. If
Speaker 1: a goilbie tries to jump the cueue, things can get ugly.
Speaker 1: They will lock jaws, which we sometimes call mouth fighting,
Speaker 1: and when they lock the jewels, they are just basically
Speaker 1: in the throes of a full on brawl. It can
Speaker 1: last for several minutes, and after that usually they break
Speaker 1: away and the loser will then get kicked out of
Speaker 1: the coral. Once it's evicted, it doesn't have much chance.
Speaker 1: I'm afraid, so back on land. How does Marian herself
Speaker 1: respond when someone tries to skip her jaw lock, headlock, matlock.
Speaker 1: I usually will say something because a lot of the
Speaker 1: time this kind of negative social behavior goes unchecked, and
Speaker 1: so that allows for it to continue. We are actually doing,
Speaker 1: you know, what would be defined as a social service,
Speaker 1: because we're trying to stop Q jumpers wherever they are.
Speaker 1: You sounds like the Batman of lines, aquatic researcher, slash
Speaker 1: line vigilante Marian Wong The secret of your identity is safe.
Speaker 1: With this internationally distributed podcast, Marian's gobies can spend the
Speaker 1: better part of their lives in line, and some people
Speaker 1: do too. Hello, Hello, Hi, Hey, is this Mr Janosh?
Speaker 1: This is Brian Janosh wants something very badly and he's
Speaker 1: prepared to wait a very long time to get it.
Speaker 1: Like what's your current position online? I am one hundred
Speaker 1: and seventeen thousand, two hundred and ten, so only a
Speaker 1: hundred and seventeen thousand, two hundred nine people in front
Speaker 1: of him. Brian is in line for Green Bay Packers
Speaker 1: season tickets. For those of you who don't follow American football,
Speaker 1: the Green Bay Packers played for the state of Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: and they are incidentally the arch rivals of my home
Speaker 1: states team, the Minnesota Vikings. Demand for Packers tickets is insane.
Speaker 1: You can call them. The lovely woman who was on
Speaker 1: the phone with me, I could only assume her name
Speaker 1: was like Doris Um. I asked her then, how many
Speaker 1: people are in the line total? She said it's hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty nine thousand, and I said, okay, so that's
Speaker 1: what thirty forty years And the first thing she did
Speaker 1: was laughed. Is that probably longer than that? So I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, like at this point, for reality,
Speaker 1: it's not so much for me, Like if this happens,
Speaker 1: you know, I'll be in my seventies, my eighties. It's
Speaker 1: sort of like throwing a wish in a well. I
Speaker 1: feel so wealthy or something. You are more or less
Speaker 1: at this point thinking as much about your children and
Speaker 1: the next generation as you are yourself. Do you have kids? No,
Speaker 1: I don't get on that. If there's anything you know,
Speaker 1: high on my list of why to procreate and have kids,
Speaker 1: it's like someone's got to keep my place in line.
Speaker 1: It is impossible to overstate the length that people will
Speaker 1: go to for these tickets. The team doesn't allow people
Speaker 1: to sell them, and they can only be willed to
Speaker 1: a spouse or blood relative, which prompted a dude on
Speaker 1: Craigslist to offer to marry and divorce a ticket holder
Speaker 1: or to be adapted by one to get the transfer done.
Speaker 1: There was someone one point in time who offered like
Speaker 1: money to legally change his name so that he could
Speaker 1: take some one's tickets. There have been things like that
Speaker 1: that I've heard about. You know, I'm not a fan
Speaker 1: of that. I feel like it's not very Green Bay.
Speaker 1: It's not very like Packers spirit. You know, we're all
Speaker 1: in this together, and that attitude is one of like
Speaker 1: looking out for one another more than it is for
Speaker 1: you know, jump in your place inline. That sounds a
Speaker 1: little more like Vikings fan behavior. Not cool, Brad guy,
Speaker 1: let's back off. Does it feel worth it to stand
Speaker 1: in this line? Sure? This line is like a way
Speaker 1: of identification. It's a badge of honor. You know, It's
Speaker 1: like I'm happy to be number one. Two. Do you
Speaker 1: ever wonder like, are those people getting tickets? Are they dying?
Speaker 1: It's probably a bit of both. There's a little morbidity
Speaker 1: to uh standing in this line, because you know there's
Speaker 1: only two ways out of it. We'll check back with
Speaker 1: Brian every decade or so to see how he's faring,
Speaker 1: so you know, stay tuned. We all spend a decent
Speaker 1: share of our lives in line for tacos, at the
Speaker 1: emergency room for the last train home back from more tacos.
Speaker 1: We hold positions in a web of invisible lines too,
Speaker 1: waiting for an unknown clerk to approve alone or run
Speaker 1: a background check or grant a marriage license. Lines, with
Speaker 1: all their potential for foul play and righteous violence, are
Speaker 1: like tiny, single file republics, self governed temporary sovereignties where
Speaker 1: we are asked to regard one another equally. Bring a book,
Speaker 1: but also like bring your best self next time. On
Speaker 1: Deeply Human, we're investigating symmetry and beauty. Why are we
Speaker 1: so attracted to symmetrical faces? Deeply Human is hosted Bydessa
Speaker 1: Classic Third person Maneuver and as co production of the
Speaker 1: BBC World Service in American Public Media with iHeartMedia