Happily, queueing is not the Kiwi way and I’m talking here about genuine standing-in-line stuff, not the hours of waiting in a seat at an overworked hospital emergency department. At least they even provide a mattress in the corridor if you’re really crook.
Some queuing is hard to understand, usually involving people who can best be described as eccentric, like the crowd who queued in George St a couple of years ago simply to buy some sort of biscuit.
More justified, and perhaps the most famous Dunedin food queue, was the one which formed outside the Holsum Bakery shop in George St during the great bread shortage of 1948.
When Labour first came to power in the mid-1930s the unemployed were still plentiful and that caused a headache queue for Minister of Public Works Bob Semple, who complained that his office was being turned into a labour bureau.
Queues were forming outside this office as unemployed men sought to "ask Bob for a job". This led to him reshaping his department as a development arm of government rather that an office doling out relief work.
When we had real post offices and banks you’d queue in front of the tellers and much fun was to be had watching the smart alecs who ducked and dived from queue to queue hoping to be in the fastest-moving one, only to end up behind a customer arranging to transfer a substantial sum overseas and taking half an hour to do so.
Of course, if you spent time in the army queuing was just a way of life. You’d often have to join a queue in order to be able to join another queue.
These days probably only those who risk air travel are subjected compulsorily to waiting in line.
Queues at the carpark, the check-in counter, the coffee shop, the security machines and, finally, the departure gate. All the while, wondering if your trip is really necessary.
It seems, though, that queueing is part of the British way of life and in the UK pubs have recently put up notices asking drinkers not to queue at the bar, a habit they’ve taken to in a big way.
Queuing in pubs is an abomination. The correct method, and the one which prevailed in the good old days, was to simply breast up to the bar and plonk your cash on top.
While the barman (barmaids were illegal until 1961), with a knack of remembering the arrival time of each punter, went about his serving while you’d strike up a conversation with the blokes on either side of you. No hurry for the actual drink. When it was your turn the barman knew what you drank, poured it, scooped some cash from your pile and slapped any change down. When your pile was down to tuppence, it was time to go home.
At the Whitehouse Hotel at Lorneville in Southland the bar was so long a team of barmen was required at busy times but there was no queuing.
Some modern pubs aren’t helping by having very small bars and lots of tables. This encourages queuing and should be outlawed.
It also prevents sociability. Who actually has a yarn in a queue?
My favourite queue story concerns my father and there’s poignancy in it as it happened not too long before his death. It was 1950 and South Canterbury had won the Ranfurly Shield for the first time. They were due to play their first challenger at Fraser Park and grandstand tickets could be bought at the rugby union office when it opened at 8.30 in the morning.
A queue began to form outside the office the night before and my father sent my mother down to join the queue while he stayed at home to mind the kids and get a good night’s sleep. My mother joined the queue, about third from the front, and stayed there all through a cold June night. About 8 in the morning my father, who had arranged for a neighbour to look after the kids for half an hour, raced down to the office to take the place saved by my mother.
She came home to warm up while my father went on to grab a couple of the best seats in the stand. The next morning the Timaru Herald ran a picture of the people at the front of the queue "who had braved a chilly overnight vigil to be sure of getting tickets" and my father was right there wearing a big smile. His "vigil" in the queue had lasted 16 minutes!
— Jim Sullivan is a Patearoa writer.
