Standing Around, Serious Business
So, I spent a week at Disney and this is apparently the time of year when a whole lot of people from Where Great Britain Used To Be decide to come to America to eat over priced food and stand in lines waiting to get on a boat to look at robots. Yeah, they call it riding rides but a lot of rides at Disney consist of getting on a boat and looking at robots, while also playing annoying music. Where was I? Oh yeah. Brits!
Seems the Brits take this standing in line business seriously. So seriously, they’ve even come up with a verb form to indicate it as an activity other than standing around (yeah, they’re both verbs but one actually describes an action or activity). Now, sure, everyone hates when someone cuts line but the other stuff, most people don’t care about. If standing in a line in a roped off area, most people just sort of stand wherever and haphazardly meander forward whenever space opens up. But not the British. They are very focused on the line, where they are and where others should be. To your average American, it means fuck all to be standing, say, here or three feet in front of here. But this drives the Brits crazy. And, often, they’ll get a bit too close and in the personal space of someone used to carrying a gun, who’s not a fan. Oddly, they only ever seemed to yell at other Brits about it.
I guess they stand in lines a lot.
October 11th, 2012 at 8:01 pm
explains why they aren’t rioting about the long lines for vital healthcare.
Even if they die in line, they’re fine with it. I guess you could say they’re “thinking of England”.
October 11th, 2012 at 8:11 pm
I horrified a bunch of Brits on vacation in India by giving the baggage handler a five rupee bill ( a bit more than 2 cents at the time ) to get my bag off the bus first.
One decided to yell about it and carried on about me paying 2 cents to cut their bag queue.
I explained to him that for 500 rupees, I could pay that cop down the street to break his arms …
October 11th, 2012 at 10:02 pm
Best line of the day, I heard: “If it were un-American to criticize the government, we’d still be British!”
October 11th, 2012 at 10:07 pm
Years of traveling to both England and Germany has taught me that yes, the British invented and perfected standing in line while the Germans invented and perfected milling around, sort of in line, but not really in line because that’s a Brit thing. Maybe Blitz Warten ?
October 11th, 2012 at 10:50 pm
Rupees? We don’t need no stinkin’ Rupees.
October 12th, 2012 at 4:22 am
Mayhap it’s just my slight autitude, but my queueing behavior is similar to that of the Brits.
Why, I mind the time at church last week when a cute little butterball of a girl tried to jump the line for Communion, and I shook my finger at her for doing that. She immediately deferred, and took her proper place in line. Hey, she is my sister in Christ, but she is also an annoying little kid at times.
October 12th, 2012 at 6:11 am
Never met a Brit I could tolerate very long, a lot of arrogance and smartass remarks,very annoying race of people.
October 12th, 2012 at 7:15 am
Oh, fall holiday time. I bet it was fanny pack fest and a speedo convention.
October 12th, 2012 at 8:44 am
You should see the Germans. Cut a line with them and you risk serious injury.
October 12th, 2012 at 9:30 am
To them, it isnt much overpriced food… You cant get a decent (or moderately good) burger and fries over there. Thus the reason our Brit friends want to hit up Steak n Shake when they come over here.
And currency exchanges make it somewhat affordable for them.
October 12th, 2012 at 9:48 am
I don’t have much to say about British people. I always thought I was going to be rich with all the money my dad put in IRA’s.
BUT, you mentioned annoying music. I have a reoccurring nightmare since being in Disney that all the little folk singing, “It’s a Small World After All”, are coming after me and I break out my arsenal and defend myself as if they were zombies. When the silence occurs in my dream, I know I am safe. Do I need therapy, AND, can I charge Disney for it?
October 12th, 2012 at 9:54 am
Took me a bit to decipher Brit language when my friend’s parents visited from England. They kept talking about the ‘queues’ in the US and how unruly people were while standing in them. By unruly, they meant that people here don’t conform to a government approved distance between persons while standing. I found the word queue funny and chuckled that they use such a ‘serious’ word for lines.
Good news is that learning the meaning ‘queue’ in Brit-speak clarified the lyrics to Cream’s “Badge” for me.
October 12th, 2012 at 10:00 am
However, “Queuing” seems to disappear whenever there’s a Soccer game happening. Just how many people have been crushed to death over there for a Match?
October 12th, 2012 at 10:13 am
I think the loss of queue etiquette has more to do with their incessant need to pickle themselves in Stella Artois or Carlsburg than it does the actual soccer…er…football match.
My friend told me that back in the day, they used to allow spectators to purchase kegs for soccer matches. I could see that going over real well here for an Eagles/Giants game.
October 12th, 2012 at 10:22 am
I run into that in Disneyworld too. Our group and a group of Brits got intermingled in the line, and as most of our group was ahead, we consolidated to the front. The moaning was noticeable for 15 min.
October 12th, 2012 at 11:28 am
Who needs to carry a gun at Disney World?
π
October 12th, 2012 at 11:38 am
Blowsy middle-age Brit gents & ladies (age 28-42 in their case) packing the waistline and stretching the Speedo go on cheap package-tours and stay at the low-rent end of Kaananpali Beach, lookin’ for Love.
The big group-tours are designed to semi-anonymously hook-up a bunch of sex-starved couples, and drinkin’s the main way to facilitate that, so they get totally-totally-totally hammered on cheap-booze Mai-Tais at a cheesy Luau with giant fake plastic-head Tikis and pseudo-Hawaiian crap-food.
It’s slightly more embarrassing than watching a drunk 16-yr old American girl at Oktoberfest running through the Hofbrauhaus shouting “Jaegermeister, dude!”
October 12th, 2012 at 12:24 pm
The first time I heard of a queue, it was when Queueing Theory was being discussed in a math-meets-computer-science course in college.
Oddly, Wiki claims that the originator of that theory wasn’t a Brit…
October 12th, 2012 at 3:24 pm
The last time I was at Disney World the Brazilian soccer team and their families were there. They got excited about everything-rides, food, you name it. It actually made the experience much more entertaining.
They did start an actual mini-riot at Medivial Times. Very passionate about the Green Knight, the Brazilians. His death was avenged.
October 12th, 2012 at 7:55 pm
I though “queueing” was irritating Captain Picard so much that he’d draw a phaser on you.
October 12th, 2012 at 8:12 pm
Dude, why do you go to Disney in the first place? Not only are they leftists but they screw up your kids in all kinds of ways. Whitaker Chambers may have translated Bambi into English, doing more damage than he ever did as a Communist spy but even he couldn’t have foreseen what Disney would do with it once it was accessible in English.
October 12th, 2012 at 9:48 pm
“Oh, fall holiday time. I bet it was fanny pack fest and a speedo convention.”
Better find out what “fanny” means to the Brits before you bandy that about too much. π
October 13th, 2012 at 9:59 am
I deal with the English alot at work. They are odd. My experience is similar as BigCatDaddy (lot of arrogance and smartass remarks). In the last couple of years, I’ve noticed the Canadians are becoming that way too.
I love talking self-defense with them. Defending your family in your home is a foreign concept to them. They are shocked when I explain the self-defense laws in Georgia.
October 14th, 2012 at 11:16 am
I’m a USA citizen… I’ve been to Europe. I’ve waited in line with them at a bus stop in Edinburgh where the bus stopped and my dad rushed forward to get on..I waited. A nice old guy thanked me and stated they all noticed where they were in line to be fair to those who were in line first instead of thinking only of themselves…
Think about that…
Their way is more fair and more polite while putting everyone before “me.” I’d prefer that here, but many of “us” really are rude. Just accept it-most put “me” first. Sad really…