What our love-hate relationship with waiting in lines says about American culture

Whether it’s at the grocery store or the airport or outside a movie theater or electronics store, most, if not all of us, have waited in a line. Sometimes it’s out of necessity. Sometimes it’s to be the first to see or get our hands on something.

And sometimes, we maybe don’t even know why we’re in a particular line.

So why do some people seek out lines while others do everything they possibly can to avoid them? And what can lines tell us about ourselves?

Amanda Kehrberg, a Ph.D. student at ASU’s Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and The Show's resident pop culture expert, came into the studios to talk about it.

Amber Victoria Singer

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KJZZ

Full conversation

MARK BRODIE: Amanda, good morning. Thank you for waiting in a line of sorts to to be on The Show while the other segments played. Appreciate it.

AMANDA KEHRBERG: Good morning. Good morning. I’m happy to be here. I was also in a Starbucks line this morning, so I’ve been in a couple.

MARK BRODIE: Oh, so two lines and it’s not even 10 o’clock. You’re doing great. Um, so like how do you make distinctions between the kinds of lines that people stand in? Like I mentioned, like if you’re going on an airplane, you have to stand in line at TSA, or even if you have like PreCheck, there might be a line there or to get on the plane. Some lines we choose to be in.

AMANDA KEHRBERG: Absolutely. Yeah, some lines are just expressions of value, things that we really really want or desire, whether we’re waiting in line for the coolest new food trend or the Nike Book 2s or for Phoenix Fan Fusion. They can be about things that we’re really, really passionate because we tend to hate lines. So if we’re waiting in them, we either absolutely have to be there. It’s the TSA line, it’s the DMV line, it’s, you know, whatever.

MARK BRODIE: Checkout at the grocery store or something.

AMANDA KEHRBERG: Exactly, it’s needs and wants. Oh my gosh, yeah, the the Mother’s Day weekend lines at Trader Joe’s were crazy. I remember finding someone with like a board standing back uh by the the dairy section. And he was like, “I’m the end of the line.” And I was like, “OK, what’s up?”

MARK BRODIE: And you probably have to even wait in line to find a parking spot, too, right?

AMANDA KEHRBERG: Absolutely. Yeah, never mind the lines we’re in in the drive-thru. So it’s like all of these different kinds of experiences. Because lines are sort of, especially in in our highly individualistic digital society, lines are one of our last third places where we are around each other.

So that really changes the types of people that we’re around, whether we’re just thrown in with the crowds at the DMV or at the airport, just doing our best in the face of adversity — or we are in line for something we really want, in which case we end up in these kind of homogeneous queues with people we might actually want to hang with. People who value the the 5:00 a.m. pastry as much as we do.

MARK BRODIE: OK. So let’s talk a little about sort of the social dynamics, because there’s obviously an a certain etiquette in line, right? Like don’t cut. Do not cut the line, right?

AMANDA KEHRBERG: Absolutely. Yeah, and don’t hold spaces. That one’s a little more malleable. OK. Yeah, yeah, it depends. It’s it’s such an interesting cultural thing because around the world different cultures — again depending on how collectivist, individualist they are, how much trust in institutions they have — have different ethical parameters around how they stand in line.

In America, it it really depends. We’re we’re a little messier, but we also still take it very, very seriously. Psychological studies have shown that we prefer fairness to actually speed. So we’d rather that the line had clear social justice than that we got there faster.

And we’re also terrible at telling how long we stand in line. It could actually be five minutes and we’re sure it’s 10. We’re just convinced, which is, obviously lots of stores and uh and customer service research has to be done on this because they’re managing expectations. If we go to the grocery store and the lines are too long, we are not going to be happy.

MARK BRODIE: Right. OK, so what about conversing with your fellow line standers? Like is that OK? Because in some cases like if I’m standing in the grocery store at the line at checkout, like I may be just want to zone out and not talk to somebody. But I wonder like if you’re with your fellow sneakerheads waiting for the latest Air Jordan to drop, maybe it’s it’s better?

AMANDA KEHRBERG: I think so, honestly. I’ve had I’ve had wonderful conversations standing in lines. Even just like recently, I was standing in line for a Mercury giveaway and talking to all the other people in line because they’re probably cool people that I could talk to, we have something in common. It’s like that kind of serendipity that we don’t really have I think in public as much anymore.

That’s very different to the drive-thru line where you’re just in your vehicle entirely enclosed. The only time someone talks to you is if you have to think through the fact that someone’s just paid for your order and now you’re supposed to pay it forward, which it’s its own again ethical quandary.

But yeah, I think then when you get into those “have to be there” lines, a lot of us don’t want to talk to each other. And if we do, maybe it’s to exchange a look of like, “Oh my God.”

MARK BRODIE: This is taking forever.

AMANDA KEHRBERG: Look at this. Look at this situation we’re in. Will Ferrell does the best jokes about that. He loves like his favorite character is just the angry American who’s just like, “Come on, I got business to do!”

MARK BRODIE: So, OK, you mentioned how like most of us really don’t like lines, and yet the stereotype of Americans is that we will stand on line for pretty much anything, right?

AMANDA KEHRBERG: Did you just say on line? So you got the New York-New Jersey. Yeah.

MARK BRODIE: I am from the East Coast. Do some people say they stand in line?

AMANDA KEHRBERG: Yeah, yeah, in line versus on line. Yeah.

MARK BRODIE: And what about people who queue?

AMANDA KEHRBERG: Oh yeah, yeah, the British. Very, very serious about it. Very stiff upper lift about doing it. Yeah.

MARK BRODIE: So why like why are we willing to do this if we despise it so much?

AMANDA KEHRBERG: I think that’s really the FOMO. Like Americans, we have this this sense of like we want to be there first, we want to get the newest thing, the latest craze. It’s so much a part of our identity and wanting to experience that whatever, again, whatever the most exciting new thing is.

So that’s like why people are getting up at 4:00 in the morning to go stand in line for pastries in Gilbert or for bagels in Tempe. It’s like you want to be there to experience it, and then especially I think there’s a feedback loop with social media of like, “Hey look at this, I’m in the line. I’m here, I’m here at this really special moment.” The line itself becomes an event.

MARK BRODIE: Well and what about like I have seen instances where like I’ve driven by somewhere and there has been a line, and I’ve seen people kind of walking by and like looking at it and then like rush to the end of it. Like they might not even know what they’re waiting in line for, but they assume there’s a line, there must be something great at the end of it.

AMANDA KEHRBERG: Exactly, that’s the line communicates so much of popularity and value externally, too. So if I see a line, I think, “OK, there’s probably something really important at the end of that.” And and again, that like, uh, fear of not getting there at the right time. It’s like if I if I delay even a second, imagine how many more people might be in front of me.

MARK BRODIE: I’ll miss the free whatever they’re giving out or like they’ll run out of the pastry or the bagel or whatever it is that or the slice of pizza, whatever it is people are waiting for.

AMANDA KEHRBERG: Whatever it is, whatever it is. Or in Finland, the free bucket.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, yeah. What like what’s the deal with the buckets?

AMANDA KEHRBERG: OK, so in 1974 in Finland, there was a publicity stunt where an opening store gave away free buckets. Hundreds of people showed up.

MARK BRODIE: Just like like buckets you take to the beach, like a plastic sand bucket?

AMANDA KEHRBERG: Yeah, just a bucket, yeah, or like, you know, or a mop bucket. Whatever, you can do a lot of things with a bucket. And and so hundreds of Finnish people showed up in line, and since then it’s become a regular thing that places will give away free buckets, and now it’s actually considered kind of a cultural tradition.

They call it the ämpärijono and it’s standing in line talking to people — which again if you know about Finnish culture, they don’t like to do that a lot in public. It’s very much keep to yourself. But for a bucket, heck yeah.

MARK BRODIE: All right, have bucket will stand on line.

AMANDA KEHRBERG: Yeah.

MARK BRODIE: That is Amanda Kehrberg, our resident pop culture expert. Amanda, great as always to talk to you, thank you.

AMANDA KEHRBERG: Oh, thank you so much, Mark.

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