I don’t think we Americans are bad at it, but I don’t think we’ve got anything on the English or the Japanese (bonus, and pardon the links to the bad place), not enough to consider it a markable trait of ours. I suspect we’re probably middle to high-middle in queuing globally, although I won’t claim to be the most world-traveled or knowledgeable person.
Yeah, my experience is primarily from noticing how prevalent line-skipping was in Germany in my childhood compared to the US. As I said, people do it, but it’s VERY frowned upon.
If you think Americans have an innate instinct to line up single-fine in queues, you clearly haven’t seen queues in other countries.
I lived in Germany for 10 years, so I certainly saw the lack of respect for the queue there! But that was in the 80s-90s, maybe it’s better now.
I don’t think we Americans are bad at it, but I don’t think we’ve got anything on the English or the Japanese (bonus, and pardon the links to the bad place), not enough to consider it a markable trait of ours. I suspect we’re probably middle to high-middle in queuing globally, although I won’t claim to be the most world-traveled or knowledgeable person.
Yeah, my experience is primarily from noticing how prevalent line-skipping was in Germany in my childhood compared to the US. As I said, people do it, but it’s VERY frowned upon.