In England, there is one rule of queueing, which could be named as “no-obviously-queue-to-disorientate-outsiders”. The English form an orderly queue. Of one.
In many places, there are no straight lines (but rather invisible ones) that signify a queue. The English just know. You do not. If you fail to join, you will be reminded of it either with many eyes’ rolling or loudly in words.
I wonder how an English man would feel if he were in the very yard of this Vietnamese pagoda:
Yeah, we do not queue in Vietnam. Not for buses. Not for cinema tickets. And of course, not for sacred returns.
It seems to me the Dutch don’t take queueing too serious either though perhaps in a more civilizing way than the Vietnamese. When I was at a bus stop yesterday, I noticed that people were so unwilling to form a queue. There was no pushing and shoving though. I thank Buddha for that. Here comes my thanks.
When you make a payment over a counter in Newcastle of the UK where I used to live, the conversation is more or less like:
– It will be eleven fifty. Thank you.
– Here you are. Thank you.
– Your receipt and your change. Thank you.
– Thank you.
I am not exaggerating. Any English will agree with me. ( Thanks for the support)
Most or all of the “thanks” are not likely to be there if the conversation is in a Vietnamese supermarket. I grew up learning to show my gratitude and politeness through a smiley face or a slight bow. When I got back from England, the temptation is to replicate the above conversation every day, at least with my share of thanks. But I found it difficult to do in my mother tongue because when I speak Vietnamese I act Vietnamese. I stop following the English social etiquette of thanks.
Among the first words in Vietnamese as well as Dutch that my English boyfriend learns, “thank you” was the obvious. We even had a so-called argument about how to pronounce it in Dutch. We did it differently, which is rather predictable.
Anyway, thank for queuing!
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