![]() ![]() In some countries, Weiss says there is more cultural patience both with wait times and uncertainty because delay is assumed to be a “fact of life.” In some developing countries, people wait as a milling crowd or a ragged queue for fundamentals (state services, gas, sometimes food and water). ‘Loose Etiquette’ SituationsĪ neat, orderly line is not the norm everywhere, though. In Thailand, local politicians go to the head of the line, according to Weiss. ![]() ![]() In the United Arab Emirates, for instance, the ruling class Emirati often walk to the front of the line and are waited on immediately, a reality that’s widely accepted. In some hierarchical societies, etiquette is unspoken but still rigorous. Queue line tv#In the U.S., there are even TV screens in taxis and at gas pumps, endlessly looping entertainment snippets so that even a brief wait passes painlessly. Waiting areas are expected to be heated/cooled to comfortable temperatures and to be diverting, with TV screens, magazines and Wi-Fi. People in developed countries have high expectations of physical comfort. And in Japan, queueing is so formal that a single spot on a ski chair lift may go empty rather than assuming two unrelated parties would be OK sharing a lift. (They were right to worry - nearly half the time, according to Milgram’s data, New Yorkers reacted angrily to line-cutters.) In Britain, queueing rules are so socially important that they even became part of the citizenship test. In the U.S., the unspoken rules about lines are so strong that in an experiment conducted in New York City by psychologist Stanley Milgram found it took researchers often half an hour to work up the courage to cut in line. Many developed countries have strict etiquette around queueing, with clear signposts and an entrenched commitment to “first come, first serve” fairness. According to Weiss and his co-authors, retailers looking to serve a global audience need to understand the local expectations for queueing and tailor their plans accordingly. In some countries, people expect to mill around, jockeying for position and clamoring for attention, while in others, finding chaos instead of an orderly queue would be so off-putting that a brand could suffer permanent harm. Some cultures see needing to wait as almost always negative, while in other societies, seeing there’s a line can actually boost the product’s reputation, as it can signal there’s something worth waiting for. But how they view the wait, what the “rules” are, and what they expect in terms of accommodation from a business vary widely. The team published observations from years of travel and research in “Line, Line, Everywhere a Line: Cultural Considerations for Waiting-Line Managers” in Business Horizons.Īcross the globe, people wait - for food and transportation, to make purchases, to get services or to have experiences. Weiss and colleagues Graham Gillam, Kyle Simmons and Donald Stevenson. Does “waiting in line” need translation, or do all cultures view a wait as undesirable? It turns out there’s cultural nuance to queueing, according to Darden Professor Elliott N. ![]()
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