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WILKES-BARRE — So, I’m standing in line at a coffee shop the other day when a young, college-aged girl walks in to meet her friends.
Now I’m about 10th in line and there are about eight more behind me. It was a busy day — a lot of people were out and about enjoying the 60-plus-degree weather. Iced coffee was a popular drink this day.
So, this aforementioned young girl walks in, right past the eight people behind me and past me to her friends. She says to them, “Should I do this? Is this OK?” Her friends — one older woman with a young daughter and two about the same age as the line-jumper — assured her she was fine.
I didn’t say anything. I was waiting for the girl to ask me if it was OK for her to jump the line. I would have smiled and asked her a question:
“What if there were five of you? Would it be OK for all five of you to jump in line?”
I’m sure the answer would be “No, of course not.”
My response would be, “Then why is it OK for one?”
The reality is, it’s not OK to jump the line. Those of us who were standing in line, I guess, are not as significant as the line-jumper. And she not only got to purchase her bottle of water ahead of me and the others behind me, she had the nerve to order a sandwich too.
This event got me to thinking. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in a convenience store waiting in line. You’ve been there — two cash registers going, one long line. Then some line-jumper walks through the door and goes right to the register that just opened up — totally ignoring the line already formed with several people waiting.
And I blame the clerks as well — they never scold the line-jumpers — they just wait on them as if nothing is wrong. These are the same types who, like some sales clerks I know, will talk on the phone rather than wait on people who are already in their stores, money in hand, wanting and waiting to purchase something. No, these clerks would rather spend time giving store hours to a caller, or checking to see if they carry a requested item.
Leo Matus, a legendary businessman who wrote the book on customer service, once told me, “You never keep a customer waiting.” In other words, the most important people are the ones in your store waiting to make a purchase — not the ones calling to see if you have an item and asking the price to see if your price is the best.
When I was a kid, it was not unusual to go into a store and walk up to the counter, money in hand, and then some other kid would run in, grab something and rush to the counter acting like he is in a hurry. The store owners back then and their employees would always say, “Hold on there young fella, these people were here first. I’ll get to you when it’s your turn.”
Lesson learned. Manners are important. What is right, is right. No matter who you think you are, you are not more important than anybody else. Don’t just jump in front of people in line. It’s rude. You should know better.
Many stores have a system. They have little machines that dispense numbers and a wall-mounted display that let’s everyone know what number is being served. It’s a great feeling when the deli counter is crowded and they are serving Number 72 and you take your number and it’s Number 75. You feel so relieved.
Other times, you go to the same deli counter and it doesn’t look that busy. Number 72 is being served, but you get Number 91. OK, you decide to do some other shopping, occasionally stopping back at the deli counter to see what number is being served.
Then you notice something odd. A person arrives, walks to the ticket machine and before they pull out a number, they notice that on top of the machine are discarded tickets — placed there by people who got tired of waiting for their deli meats or cheeses. You have Number 91, the counter is at 85, they yell “86,” and the person who snagged that discarded ticket says, “That’s me.”
A true glitch in the system. But all is fair in war and deli shopping.
But line-jumping is never an acceptable strategy.
