Queue Jumping

Queue is a line of people who are waiting for something; could even be vehicles that stop on the road for the green signal to ‘GO’.

It is an arrangement where the first person in the queue is the first one out or to be served. The capacity to stand in a queue is a test of discipline and patience. Queues are marvel of orderliness.

Queue-jumpers take a place in a queue ahead of those already queuing in front of them. They butt; they barge; they bump at any position of the line, other than the end; this they do unfairly, sliding sneakily like a snake to obtain some advantage out of turn. They do not mind causing inconvenience to others. Arguments often erupt whenever somebody does this. Vehicles cut in line on the road, and are frequent instigators of rage. Making good and bad drivers simmer like a kettle with its lid blown off.

There are different types of queues --- at supermarket, banks, at electricity, water and telephone bill counters in Churches and Temples where devotees line up to get ‘darshan’ or ‘prasad’.

I have watched people queue-jumping to express wedding wishes to the conjugal couple after the nuptial Mass; and also in the line at cemetery door to sympathise with the near and dear ones, of those who have been buried after having ended their earthly journey and gone to a better land. There is no argument or any rage at such places because queues have their own atmosphere depending for what it is and where it is. But even here, some, weakly comment: “bad mannered queue-breakers”; others, show the spirit of tolerance by ignoring such line-skippers, for according to them, life is a journey along with all sorts of people; so they maintain their positivism in such negative situations.

Queue breakers think, that there is nothing wrong with their conduct; their half-bake-self-opinion is that their behaviour is normal and natural. Queue breaker’s behaviour isn’t an act of decency but a downfall of civilized decorum. They don’t have the remotest idea that the quality of life is determined by speech and action which comes from mind.

When PM Modi took the strong step to curb, black money there were serpentine queues outside banks and ATM kiosks. Such a queue has led to a social benefit by teaching most of the people, literally, to fall in line; But alas a few clever minds do not want to give up their special skill of queue- jumping or line-cutting.

Honourable queue jumpers jump the queue, perhaps, because they are biologically programmed to be false-hearted in their habits.  

If line-cutters curb their tendency to act unfairly, they will demonstrate the highest values of life. But they may have to pass through many generations before they gravitate towards the regular gradation of civilised queue. I only hope and pray that if their queue-jumping is hereditary, that one day, genetic engineers re-programme such individuals to become honest and upright citizens for individuals who take their place in orderliness is an agreeable pleasure to those in the line but queue-jumpers are a thorn in the line of all those in the queue. We must destroy the habit of disorder before it destroys us.