The five Israelis ahead of you in line |
I’ve spent enough time queuing in Israel to conclude two things.
First: Israelis do not stand in line.
Second: there are only five kinds of Israelis, and somehow, all of them are always ahead of me.
I don’t consider this criticism so much as an anthropological observation.
Other countries queue. Israelis gather loosely around the concept of a line and then negotiate who goes next socially, spiritually, and occasionally militarily.
Nobody is entirely sure where the line begins or whose turn it is. But everyone is completely confident that they understand the system better than everyone else.
I’ve observed this in supermarkets, pharmacies, airport security, government offices, cafes, bakeries, and once, memorably, at a falafel stand where one man loudly declared that he was not cutting because, “I only need one thing,” as though line etiquette operated on volume rather than chronology.
Over time, I’ve identified five main archetypes.
The first is The Optimizer.
The Optimizer arrives late and leaves first.
They never explicitly cut. That would suggest rules existed to break.
Instead, they approach the counter at a forty-five-degree angle and ask a question........