Jul
25
For all the complaining I do about the movie-going experience, it’s a wonder why I don’t simply wait for DVD. I’m just extremely impatient. What’s more, I have a 27″ analog TV and my DVD player is a PlayStation 2. You could say my home theater is sorely lacking in accoutrements. You could also say that I don’t owe any money on my credit cards. At any rate, to get the theatrical experience, I pretty much have to put up with the hemming and hawing people do at the concession stand, and the commercials and the texting. I also kind of like to bitch and moan. Fortunately, going to the movies a lot practically guarantees I’m never hungry for material.
All that being said, why is it that whenever people are waiting in a really long line, and another register opens up right next to it, nobody will get out of the really long line and start a much shorter one? I’ve been in lines of a dozen people or more and seen this phenomenon. The cashier at the next register will peel off the person directly behind the guy at the front of the really long line, yet nobody else will migrate over. Nobody but me, that is.
I’ve had people yell at me before, too, like I’ve done something untoward. I’ve had people tell me that I was cutting — cutting in a line they’re not in! Have we become so dumbed-down as a culture that we’re too stupid to understand how lines work? You don’t wait in two lines simultaneously. If a new line opens up, all bets are off, boys and girls. You can stay in your long-ass line or get in the short-ass line. This is America. We may not know from lines like the Russian folks do, but lines are fairly self-explanatory in their form and function. We need not add complexity to the organizational structure of lining up for something. Besides, the logic movie-goers apply to waiting in line is so insipid, it boggles the mind.
If we could all get together on proper line etiquette, well, that’d at least be one less thing I’d find fantastically annoying. I’m certain that whenever a new register opens, everyone in the unmoving, overlong line next to it must immediately have the instinct to jump out of line and take the path of least resistance. I can’t be operating on a plane that’s that far removed from your average human being, even the ones who like Twizzlers. So why don’t more people do it? Why isn’t it something that happens — I dunno — every time a new register opens? Is everyone afraid of getting yelled at by those too craven to cross over, the chaps who think they can be in two places at once?
To hell with that. What’s the worst that can happen? A fistfight breaks out? Pfft, if someone wanted to come to blows with me over an issue such as this, I’d have one thing to say to them: “Get in line.”
-Brad Lohan
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