The queue is always faster on the other side

I will not name the supermarket. I still shop there. But somewhere there is a checkout queue that has taught me more about patience and human behaviour than I ever expected to learn while buying groceries.

I have a special talent. Put me in front of five supermarket queues and I will somehow choose the slowest one. I have never trained for this ability, but after years of shopping, my record is impressive.

Before choosing, I conduct proper research. I inspect their trolleys. Five people with baskets or three with full trolleys? Another looks as though someone is preparing supplies for the entire wilayat, with enough groceries to survive until the next National Day. I consider all the evidence and make my decision. A decision that I regret a few seconds later!

The queue next to me immediately begins moving like an Olympic sprint, while mine develops problems rarely seen in modern retail. An item has no barcode. A price needs checking. A card is rejected. Someone needs a supervisor. Remember, never judge a queue by its length.

Then there is the customer who waits ten minutes, reaches the cashier and appears genuinely surprised to discover that payment is required. Only then does the search begin. Bank card. Phone. Another card. Pockets are checked. Bags are opened.

Meanwhile, I identify someone in the next queue who arrived at roughly the same time as me. Without their knowledge, they are now my opponent. If they reach the cashier first, I take it personally. If I win, I walk away with the quiet dignity of a man who was never competing in the first place.

At this point, a dangerous thought enters my mind: should I change queues? Researchers have a word for switching from one queue to another in search of a faster one. It is called 'jockeying'.

I am no longer an impatient man changing supermarket queues. I should probably 'hold my horses,' but unfortunately my horses have already moved to the next queue.

Research suggests that switching can sometimes make the wait worse. We change queues to save two minutes and somehow lose five. Even worse, the moment I abandon my original queue, it begins moving beautifully. So the quickest way to make a queue move is to leave it.

I am not the only one whose patience has an expiry date; maybe you too! A 2024 Waitwhile survey of 1,000 US consumers found that 61 per cent had left a physical queue before reaching their turn. So next time I abandon my shopping because the queue looks impossible, I will not call it impatience but call it majority behaviour.

It gets even more embarrassing when we look behind us. In three studies published in the Journal of Consumer Research, researchers Rongrong Zhou and Dilip Soman found that having more people behind us can make us feel better and make us less likely to leave.

Nothing has improved in front of us. But someone else is now behind us, and somehow life feels better. At least I am now not that poor person at the back.

Harvard Business School researcher Ryan Buell studied what happens when we are last in line. His research on 'last-place aversion', published in Management Science, found that being last makes us less satisfied and more likely to switch queues or give up. I am not impatient. I am just experiencing 'last-place aversion.'

Oman is a wonderfully polite society, and queues usually reflect that. People wait quietly and generally know whose turn it is. But let somebody appear from nowhere and move towards the front with 'just one item', and suddenly several peaceful shoppers will call for justice.

Nobody wants an international incident over a packet of bread, of course, but faces begin to change. Sometimes nobody even needs to say anything, as one good look can contain an entire paragraph.

Waiting itself is also painful because ten minutes are not always ten minutes. There is an old saying that 'a watched pot never boils'. Of course it boils. But whoever invented that saying clearly understood waiting. 'Please wait' does not. Please wait for how long? Five minutes? Until Maghrib? Until the next Eid?

We sometimes compare ourselves with everybody. Someone was promoted before us. Someone bought a bigger house. Someone’s children achieved something wonderful. 'The grass is always greener on the other side', and the queue is faster there too.

So next time I go shopping, I have decided to change. I will choose a queue and stay there. No counting baskets or studying cashiers. No jockeying either. I will hang tight, hold my horses, practise patience and mind my own business. Unless, of course, the queue next to me starts moving faster.