Waiting in Line

From Nanning - Nanhu Park

Let me start this story out by explaining how lines work here. First come, first serve. When I started noticing this trend, my friend commented, “If you think Americans are impatient, the Chinese are ten times more impatient”. As I thought about his comment, I wondered if instead of being ten times more impatient, he should’ve said four times more impatient because that is how much the population of China exceeds that of the States’. But you get used to here. You get used to paying attention to when the line moves because when the line moves and you don’t, well, you’re no longer in the line. Sometimes, you think you’re in line, or you are in line, you’ve got a little bit of buffer space between you and the person ahead of you, but that space must have been too much because now, instead of being next to check-out, you’ve got five people between you and the register. Ok, I exaggerated a little, but this is how lines work here. But companies are trying to streamline service and in an effort to do that, some have installed those number machines. You press a button depending on the type of service you need and it pops out a number. Well, a typical Chinese person will push a few different options to end up with anywhere from two to four different numbers. Due to that practice, many of the numbers called are those extra tickets of people being served or already gone. This was the case as my friend and I waited patiently for our one number, and only one, to be called so I could get signed up for mobile phone service. My number was 3045. The number being called was 3035. Nobody was going. But the worker who helped us with our initial paperwork was telling us to go to the desk. I didn’t want her to continue making a scene so my friend and I head to the desk. We sit down. We think we’re doing well for time, but then another customer seems upset. I don’t speak Chinese yet, but I could tell he was upset. He says some stuff to the worker helping us. I know the worker would have kept serving us had we stayed there, but we didn’t want to cause a scene. We take our papers and stand aside thinking we had taken his spot. But we didn’t. 3036, 3037, 3038. A customer makes their way to the front. This man still waiting like us. 3039. Another person makes their way to the front. This man, still waiting. 3040. It must be his number because he sits down to be served. But then we notice a two women walk up after him. They seem confused. They glance at their ticket and then look at the number displayed above the desk. They do this a few times before they sit down to continue waiting. As we come to find out, their ticket really was 3040, but that man jumped in the seat before them, exactly what he was getting after me for doing. 3045 is finally called and we get myself setup. 

Jason