Where there’s an ATM, there’s a queue. And in London, the queue is almost always at right angles to the wall. If the pavement is too narrow for the whole queue, the queue is likely to first cross the pavement and then turn and continue alongside the road. In extreme cases I’ve seen the queue go across the pavement and then out into the street between parked cars. And if the pavement is a heavily trafficked one, the queue splits into two – one part by the ATM, then a gap to let people pass, and then the other end of the queue.
But they never turn the queue to go along the wall, which would seem to be a more natural and efficient solution – it adapts easily to longer queues, doesn’t block the pavement, and doesn’t introduce confusing gaps into the queue.
Why do Londoners choose such an awkward way of queueing? Is there some secret rule of etiquette I’ve missed? A commandment taught to all English children from an early age – “Thou shalt make the queue perpendicular”? Or is there some advantage to this method, that I have yet to see?
PS: I googled to see if anyone else found this odd, but found nothing. I did find a blog dedicated to queueing, and after a bit of browsing there found this slightly blurry picture of a queue going across the pavement, exactly the type of queue I meant. The picture was taken in Sheffield so this is obviously a wider English habit and not limited to London.
It’s a recent phenomenon that has occured over the last couple of years, maybe just a bit longer. And there are many reasons for us adapting to this queuing style.
In the olden days (the 90s, early 00s) if there was just one hole in the wall (ATM) we would queue alongside the wall. However in recent times, we have all been taught to be wary of showing our PIN to anyone and this in turn has made us all socially anxious as to whether the person using the cashpoint thinks that we are trying to memorise their PIN. By queuing behind the person, rather than beside them, we cannot see their fingers pressing buttons and we are all then quite comfortable with the situation.
If there is more than one hole in the wall, we have always queued behind rather than beside as this means that we will have both cashpoints covered. Queuing up along the side used to mean that you were only queuing for one of the cashpoints. Regional variancies of course occur.
However, the other weird thing about British cashpoint queing is how closely people stand–in the U.S. people often stand miles away from the person at the machine, but my experience in London has always been that the people stand rather uncomfortably close to me while I’m using the machine, even if they are behind rather than to the side.