On queueing

Extract

A year ago Dr. Jacek Kurczewski asked me to take part in a symposium which he organized with the Polish Sociological Association, on the sociology of everyday life. The subject of my session was to be the sociology of the queue. As a psychologist I could, of course, interpret the phenomenon of the queue in terms of the interdependence of individual interests and social justice. Theses of social psychology, based on empirical grounds, provided some explanations of the mechanisms of behaviour in a queue. These explanations, however, led to trivial conclusions, though expressed in scientific terms. Therefore I decided to choose phenomenological analysis to deal with queue behaviour. This paper is a widened and more analytical version of my speech at the PSA seminar (I). I was inspired by three events from my personal experience:

1. In Western Europe (especially in Belgium) I frequently encountered the following phenomenon. In a shop someone would come up to the counter and ask for some article, paying no attention to the fact that there were also others who were waiting to be served. To me that fact was an open violation of the rules of community life. My emotion urged me to intervene. I was held back however by the fact that the others in the shop seemed not to notice anything wrong. This would suggest that my notion of customers' rights and duties differed from that of Belgians or Dutchmen.