Blog — "Dullog"
Will queuing become an Olympic Sport?
It might just happen. In his article "Queuing could win Olympic sport status" in The Australian, Nicole Jeffery says the big challenge LOCOG (London Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games) faces is to keep it from happening.
It's reported that there will be 100 bag-check lanes at Olympic Park and that extensive training and dry runs to perfect the procedures have taken place for quite a while.
But queues are expected. "London 2012 Olympics: there will be queues, says Coe" [Lord Sebastian Coe, LOCOG chairman, winner of four medals for running in the 1980 and 1984 Olympics] is the headline of a recent article in The Guardian.
From reading the article, we get the feeling LOCOG will be relying to some extent on delays upstream to lessen the lines at the Olympic Park gates. These delays are likely to reach all the way back to immigration.
Traffic jams and delays on trains, subways, and buses, will also reduce queues at Olympic Park.
LOCOG estimates the wait to get into the stadium will be no longer than 20 minutes.
20 minutes? A wait of 20 minutes might be perfectly acceptable to the Brits. They have superior skills at queuing.
"On weekends an Englishman queues up at the bus-stop, travels out to Richmond, queues up for a boat, then queues up for a few more odd queues just for the sake of the fun, then queues up at the bus-stop and has the time of his life." [From George Mikes from his book How to Be a Brit].
But what about visitors from the rest of the world? Is Britain's reputation at risk? This is discussed on the blog posting "Queuing as an Olympic sport and a reputational risk" in the blog Olyponomics.
At the end of the day, will it really matter? Looking at the bright side, a not-overly-concerned Brit commended, "We're expecting a sort of cheerful chaos."
June 15, 2012
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Comments (3)
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Queuing is a wonderful social event for "seniors" and other introverts. Standing by strangers with the same immediate objective is a good opening for small talk, even with young ladies or men who don't even see us in everyday life. Sometimes first names are even exchanged. It can be quite satisfying.
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Brits are very good queuers, but I'll warn you all, when getting on to a train, all bets are off. Brits do the same annoying thing people seem to do in every country stand right in front of a door even thought they know people have to get off. They then proceed to try to elbow past people getting off with big bags, disabilities etc.
As someone who is significantly over 6 foot I see it as my duty to take up as much space as possible in these situations and let people get out of the train or let the old/sick/heavily burdened get on. Much to peoples annoyance.. but its not like the train is going to leave with people still standing on the platform.
Thank god for a site dedicated to dullness for letting me waffle on about this guilt free [exclamation mark removed]0 Like -
I queued up for a queue once to ride an elevator to the top of the Sears Tower in Chicago. When I got there I had to queue for the restroom. All of it took 55 minutes and that included the queue for the down elevator. I should mention that the fog and rain at the top cancelled the view, all in all it was a giant "queue up". Oh well.
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