Waiting In Lines

Living in New York City required patience. I waited in endless lines, often for multiple hours. At the grocery store, at the post office, at restaurants—if you wanted something that other people wanted, chances are you’d have to wait in line. The two years I lived there beefed up my patience for good, and for that, I am grateful. Unfortunately, the type of patient line waiter that I somehow became is a rare breed.

On Friday, I waited in a 2 hour line for a new iPhone 3GS. I usually avoid release-day-lines, as experience has told me that waiting a day can save hours, but this time I didn’t. Upon arriving, an Apple store employee informed me that it would be a two, or two and a half hour wait. By the looks of it, I thought that estimate was way off, so I was planning on waiting for a while, seeing how fast the line moved, and bailing if it took too long. But after waiting with the crowd for a while, I became captivated by humanity.
Shortly after I arrived, a guy showed up behind me and was told the same thing I was— a two to two and a half hour wait—and was utterly disgusted. Within 10 minutes, he was whining. “This sucks. [SIGH] UGH. This is so sucky. How long do they expect us to wait? ” It went on for over half an hour until at one point he asked me “[SIGH] What is going on with this line? This sucks. Have we even moved? “.

“They said it would be a 2 hour wait, what did you expect?”, I said, visibly annoyed.

Apple actually had it set up pretty well. If you registered online earlier in the week, you stood in the fast line. If you didn’t plan ahead, or were there for a reason other than buying an iPhone, you waited in the slow line. They took 1 person in the slow line for every 4 in the fast line, and it didn’t seem unfair to me.

The slow line was full of whiners and complainers—like the guy behind me—who found the situation completely unacceptable. There was a steady flow of new people who upon seeing the long lines would walk right up to the front and ask one of the Apple employees if they could buy an iPhone. After being told the estimated wait time, they would launch into a rant about the injustice of it all.

After I had been there for almost two hours and was third from the front in the slow line, a guy walked up from the very back and started telling the line about how ridiculous the wait was, as if he, in the back of the line, was experiencing a different waiting experience than the rest of us. “I’ve been waiting here for an hour, and the line has barely moved! I counted TWENTY SEVEN people coming out of the store, and not one has gone in!”. He cornered an Apple employee and angrily expressed his disgust at the whole buying experience. “I have EIGHT PHONES I want to upgrade”, he said. The Apple employee, calmly said “I’m sorry, sir, you’ll have to wait in line like everyone else”.

Me: Unbelievable

Girl next to me: What? That guy?

Me: Yeah, Columbo over here is trying to crack this line conspiracy wide open.

Whiner behind me: Well, you have to admit, it is pretty ridiculous

Me: I don’t think anybody has any reason to complain if they were told it was a two hour wait, and they had to wait two hours

Whiner: But they’re making us wait outside!

Me: And here we are, still waiting.

Whiner: But what if an elderly person came? That’s pretty mean to make someone like that wait in this line

Me: I would think that an elderly person would know what it means to wait in a two hour line, and weigh out their options before committing.

I just can’t wrap my head around the mindset of these people, getting so angry at having to wait in a long line on the launch day of an extremely popular product. Apple wasn’t forcing them to buy new phones that day, and getting the latest version of a fancy smartphone is not an urgent task. Waiting a week would not be a detriment to your health, and neither is waiting outside in a line for a couple of hours on a nice Friday afternoon.

In all these cases, the Apple employees were obligated to be polite, but if one of them decided to strangle one of these whining special snowflakes, I would have stood by and happily supported the decision.

There’s just a certain type of person that gets up in the morning and expects the world to deliver them happiness instead of taking the responsibility of finding it on their own, and I’ll never see eye-to-eye with those people. To paraphrase Mark Twain, “The world owes you nothing; it was here first.”