Jump the queue!

A queue for a ticket for the ‘must see’ gig / match / performance (delete as appropriate to your own interest) can be fun, as indeed can be the subsequent queue, with ticket safely in hand, for such an event itself. These queues have a vibe of their own, you can’t help but be caught up in the anticipation, purpose and optimism of the snaking masses, a life force of its own exuberant intent. What then, makes the queue at the Post Office, the complete antithesis? Is it ….

that, with its snail-like stealth, it is reminiscent of queues in the old days, where food and employment were carefully rationed, slowly apportioned and not always available – this feeling added to by the invariable presence of purposeful pensioners, with their “done this before” glazed expressions?

that the post office queues take in such a cross-section of society in all its glory and with all its purpose – from the exchange of the holiday savings for the currency of choice of the wealthier, to the handing over of the benefit of necessity, of the more impoverished, disabled or elderly members of society, that the queue seems interminable?

to do with timing – you know that you are caught in a race for a window, for at any given time, the Law of Murphy (or other such well known phrase) predicts that as you near the front of the queue, at least one of the windows will close, reducing your options and increasing your wait time. You know that the Law of Murphy (or more particularly the other such well known phrase) is fully responsible for this when this happens and it is in fact also your lunch time and you have spent the whole of it in the queue, sandwich in one hand, urgent parcel / letter / bill in the other.

to do with what amounts to a sensory overload, the experience of waiting, surrounded by the white noise of the grumbling queue, advertising, tannoy summoning the lucky person at the front to the window of choice, upset / tired / hungry / grumpy wailing of some poor child or worse, some poor adult (hopefully not the cashier). Of course, that’s just the sensory overload on the ears, do you really want me to explore and explain the sensory overload on the nose that comes from a prolonged queue at a local Post Office not of my own, but of desperation’s choosing?

a direct result of the fact that so many of our community Post Offices have been closed down, that the remaining branches are so over-run and over-worked, that queues form whatever the time or day, so whilst you cleverly anticpate having missed the pension queue, you actually find yourself nearer to being one in the time it takes you to pop a parcel into the post because the fact is that since the closures, main Post Offices experience little in the way of lulls nowadays, they are all busy all of the time.

Who knows, ultimately, why the experience of queuing at the post office feels like an insight into the queue of poor, misguided souls at Hell’s gate? All I do know is that if you can avoid it, if a courier can do it for you, without the queueing, stress and major time commitment, it might well be wise to pursue some of those courier options.

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