Germany and the Art of Queuing

I have had two occasions in the last few days to consider the issue of Queuing in Germany. It is something that the locals really do not like doing. Be at the bus, the bakery or supermarket. They prefer to stand in a huddle and then to push their way forward. On Sunday I went to our local bakery to buy some bread rolls for breakfast. And instead of the good people standing one behind the other, they stood around in, you guessed it, a huddle, and the dominant individuals were service first. I am not a particularly pushy person, so I always tend to lose out in these competitions. I do not generally try to complete, as I consider this pushy behaviour very common, rude and beneath my dignity. I did start to get a tiny bit irritated when the fourth person who had arrived after me was about to get helped before me. The lady at the counter finally noticed me and I was actually serviced. You could say I need to be more assertive and pushy now that I live in Germany, but it is not my nature, so I will just quietly mumble to myself about it [or Blog].

Yesterday, I was at Lidl [not the most upmarket store around]. You could of course say that if you go to Lidl, you should know what to expect. Well Lidl, is usually okay, but this particular one is rather pokey and badly laid out. Between staff unpacking pallets and people with walkers and prams it is a bit challenging. After I had managed to negotiate my way past the above mentioned hazards, I was finally in the check-out queue. There were two lanes open, but the queue only split just in front of the checkout stations [you do not want to decide until you are right there]. The result was that there was a space in front of the one till/cash register/check- out because the person had not yet decided which queue was moving faster. No problem for a particular woman, she simply walked to the front of the queue, and said to the person behind her, “Well if you are not going to stand here, then I will”. To a general outcry the old lady in question found herself “shamed” into going to the back of the queue.

There is another rather strange custom here. If you are in the check-out queue and have a lot of items, there is an expectation that you will let people with a single item or fewer items than you ahead of you in the queue.  I do this occasionally, but people actually have the nerve to ask, if they can push ahead of you.

This is only one of the reasons, why I do so love shopping in Germany.