Read any book on German culture and it will discuss the importance of time keeping. It’s one of the most common and probably accurate stereotypes about Germany. Fashionably late isn’t really a thing, nor is getting stuck in traffic a viable excuse for joining a meeting late. People’s time is to be respected, and should you ever find yourself running behind schedule, few Germans will be sympathetic. More than once, I’ve been advised to organise my life better after arriving at an appointment two or three minutes later than expected. Lateness is anxiety inducing in Germans and there is a bottomless reserve of displeasure should someone be responsible for making a German late. Moreover, being exact about the correct time of arrival is given an equal level of importance, leading to people waiting outside until the appointed time of an appointment or invitation to make sure of optimum punctuality. This national obsession with time creates a larger sense that Germany is a highly organised society, and in a lot of ways it is. However, German organisation is not uniform, and in one particular area, Germany prefers total chaos: the queue.

In most cases, personal distance is respected in Germany. It manifests linguistically in the German polite form ‘Sie’, and physically in the general respect of distance between two people having a conversation in an office setting, for instance. Yet, queues seem to be the exception to the rule - instead of paying respect to personal space, German queues are a full-contact sport. Standing close enough to touch the person in front was the accepted norm here up until the pandemic, yet even with those restrictions, maintaining distance was still an issue. With the pandemic and its social distancing now a rapidly receding memory, normal service has resumed. Apparently, if you feel the warm breath of the person behind on the nape of your neck, you’re queuing correctly. Sometimes I’m unsure if I’m waiting for the next cashier to become available or being coerced into an involuntary Human Centipede.

Fear of skin-on-skin contact with a stranger is one thing, but Germans also tend to “queue jockey”, which is to say, jump from queue to queue, in the hope that one will move faster than the other. There is no more a chaotic scene than the moment a cashier opens a new checkout on a busy Friday afternoon. I have seen pleasant old ladies move at lighting speed, all elbows and fake knees, snarling with indignation at the idea that someone might get their groceries on the conveyor belt a second before them. This impatience with waiting manifests in other ways too, for example, any sense of German organisation disintegrates the moment a traffic jam begins. Most of the traffic I experience daily has less to do with car crashes or road works and everything to do with random commuters hopping between lanes at the slightest hint they might be in the slowest queue.

If further proof were needed of the havoc that a German queue can inspire, catch a flight at any airport in Germany. Security queues are well organised, but I suspect only because they are patrolled by police officers carrying firearms. At the departure gate, it’s a totally different story. Every announcement is met with bird-like head twitches, as people wait for their opportunity to elbow-drop a toddler to get on the plane 3.5 seconds faster. Even the introduction of staggered boarding seems to have had little impact. Once a queue has formed, don’t be surprised to find sub-queues appearing at all angles, to the bafflement of non-Germans.

It’s no surprise that I’m confused by German queues, I’m British, and in Britain queues are ritual, a performance art, and like timekeeping for Germans, a national obsession. Up and down the country, the British are happily forming queues, even when they haven’t been told to. It’s surely a genetic trait, an in-built knowledge that the best way to wait for anything is in a straight line. We queue for toilets, for clubs and for deep fried chicken. Some countries require signage such as “Queue here” to guide patrons, but the British hive-mind knows where and when a queue is required and acts accordingly.

The British have mastered linear queuing but have also expanded their repertoire to include queuing two abreast, tandem queuing and the ever-elusive serpentine. To fully grasp the complexity of this intrinsic British art form, go to a pub. Here you will find the highest achievement of British queue culture: The Flush Queue. This involves a queue forming flush against the bar in a horizontal line. This might appear to be organised chaos, but the British know inherently who is first and will happily tell the barman should they accidentally attempt to serve someone out of queue order.

Perhaps the difficulty non-Germans have understanding German queue etiquette stems from the belief that timekeeping and organisation are one and the same thing. In Germany, timekeeping might be an example of a person being organised, but it is also acknowledged that of the two, timekeeping is far more important. Saving time, whether out of a sense of efficiency or simple impatience, is more important than the social norms of organisation. Therefore, queuing is acceptable, as long as it isn’t making anyone late; however, it is perfectly acceptable to ignore queue organisation, if it means saving five minutes. The problem, of course, is that everyone here seems to be trying to save as much of their precious time as humanly possible.

Germans might not observe queues with the quiet solemnity of the British, but like anything in Germany, there is a process. I don’t enjoy the German queue, but I have grown to understand its peculiar benefits. How often in life are we afforded the opportunity to body-check a stranger while buying socks at C&A on a Tuesday afternoon? Never, that’s how often. The fact that it might also save me a few precious minutes waiting in line is a bonus. Perhaps the sensible thing to do is to embrace German queuing, order a mouth guard and shin-pads, and just get involved. To the victor go the spoils, so they say, even if the spoils in question are 3 minutes saved waiting at a supermarket checkout.

Proofreader: @ScandiTina

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