Depending onwhom you believe, the average American will, over a lifetime, wait in lines fortwo years (says National Public Radio) or five years (according tocustomer-loyalty experts).
The crucial word is average, aswealthy Americans routinely avoid lines altogether. Once the mostdemocratic of institutions, lines are rapidly becoming the exclusive provinceof suckers (people who still believe in and practice waiting in lines). Poorsuckers, mostly.
Airports resemble France beforethe Revolution: first-class passengers enjoy "élite" security linesand priority boarding, and disembark before the unwashed in coach, held at bayby a flight attendant, are allowed to foul the Jetway.
At amusement parks, too, you cannow buy your way out of line. This summer I haplessly watched kids use a $52Gold Flash Pass to jump the lines at Six Flags New England, and similar systemsare in use in most major American theme parks, from Universal Orlando to WaltDisney World, where the haves get to watch the have-mores breeze past on theirway to their seats.
Flash Passteaches children a valuable lesson in real-world economics: that the rich aremore important than you, especially when it comes to waiting. An NBA playeronce said to me, with a bemused chuckle of disbelief, that when playing inCanada--get this--"we have to wait in the same customs line as everybodyelse."
Almost everyline can be breached for a price. In several U.S. cities this summer, earlyarrivers among the early adopters waiting to buy iPhones offered to sell theirspots in the lines. On Craigslist, prospective iPhone purchasers offered to pay"waiters" or "placeholders" to wait in line for themoutside Apple stores.
Inevitably,some semi-populist politicians have seen the value of sort-of waiting in lineswith the ordinary people. This summer Philadelphia mayor John Street waitedoutside an AT&T store from 3:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. before a stand-in fromhis office literally stood in for the mayor while he conducted officialbusiness. And billionaire New York mayor Michael Bloomberg often waits for thesubway with his fellow citizens, though he's first driven by motorcade past thestop nearest his house to a station 22 blocks away, where the wait, or at leastthe ride, is shorteAs early as elementary school, we're told that jumping theline is an unethical act, which is why so many U.S. lawmakers have framed theimmigration debate as a kind of fundamental sin of the school lunch line.Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, to cite just one legislator, said amnesty wouldallow illegal immigrants "to cut in line ahead of millions ofpeople."
Nothing annoys a national lawmaker morethan a person who will not wait in line, unless that line is in front of anelevator at the U.S. Capitol, where Senators and Representatives use privateelevators, lest they have to queue with their constituents.
But compromising the integrity of the lineis not just antidemocratic, it's out-of-date. There was something about theorderly boarding of Noah's Ark, two by two, that seemed to restore not justcivilization but civility during the Great Flood.
How civil was your last flight? SouthwestAirlines has first-come, first-served festival seating. But for $5 per flight,an unaffiliated company called BoardFirst.com will secure you a coveted"A" boarding pass when that airline opens for online check-in 24hours before departure. Thus, the savvy traveler doesn't even wait in line whenhe or she is online.
Some cultures are not renowned for liningup. Then again, some cultures are too adept at lining up: a citizen of the formerSoviet Union would join a queue just so he could get to the head of that queueand see what everyone was queuing for.
And then there is the U.S., where societyseems to be cleaving into two groups: Very Important Persons, who don't wait,and Very Impatient Persons, who do--unhappily.
For those of us in the latter group--consigned to coach, bereft of Flash Pass, too poor or proper to pay aplaceholder --what do we do? We do what Vladimir and Estragon did in Waitingfor Godot: "We wait. We are bored."
