Cue to Queue

When my boss interrupted my 120 second lunch, I knew it was a bad omen. ‘Why do you think this cash rich organization is resorting to such measured?’ he asked indicating to the charge proposed for queue jumping by a temple trust run by the Government. ‘Perhaps because it is no longer cash rich and due to the downturn in the economy, maybe the hundi collections have gone down despite the footfalls being the same.’ I made sure I always threw in latest management jargons as he often complained I was too old for my job. ‘We too are affected by the downturn in the economy so, investigate how this idea can be adopted to our company’ he uttered as he waved me out off his cabin.

I sat at my desk wondering how a company like ours which was in a highly competitive field of light engineering can apply this idea. As I kept hitting a brick wall, I thought it best to investigate from the source and find how this all started. I called up an old colleague in the Legislative assembly and asked whose brain child it was. He laughed and told me that I would not believe that it was the brainchild of the peon of the honorable minister. ’Huh?’ is all I could respond. It seems the minister’s peon was fired for accepting cash to jump queue of the visitors to meet the minister. There is where the minister got the idea. Still refusing to believe that a lowly peon was the inventor of the VIP darshan fee, I decided to check up history.

Meeting the King

We have often heard of persons seeking audience of the any King to bear gifts. What one never heard was the number of gifts scattered on the way for the benefit of the influential ones like the guards at the town gate, the palace guards etc. The ultimate is the gift to the King as if it is the price paid to him for his ears for the specified period of time. If the first citizen of the kingdom was this corrupt, what can one expect from the lowly subjects?

Ubiquitous Queues in India

Till the present day, the queues are everywhere in India. The ration shop. The lone pipe in the hutment colony. The admission into schools and colleges. On the romantic front, the most attractive girls also has a queue of boys. To jump the queue the one with the biggest diamond as a gift gets her date on valentine’s day! Promotion queues are common in every office. Each senior seat has 500 aspirants. And all of them thought getting in the company was the only queue they had to beat. In each of these cases, there are the imaginative and non-patient few who device methods to jump the queue. The Air traffic Controller of every airport is alleged to benefit a few airlines. The cost of fuel burning waiting for take off is really high cost for the airlines. While this queue jumping is intended for profit, the other queues of soup kitchens is to pacify a growling stomach where acids are poured by the glands merely due to the smell of the soup!

No queue here

I wondered if there was absence of queue anywhere. Though there are scattered few examples, none the less, these examples exist. I was always blessing my forefathers for the surname to start low down when there were oral (verbal) examinations in the school. The methodology of the teacher would be revealed by the ones who had finished first while I was nicely in the last 5 of the class. It gave time for last minute revision. Here, no-one in his right mind would want to jump the queue!

However, there is one solitary case where when one reaches the head of the queue, one prefers to give way to the person behind. This is no reflection of any chivalry but a selfish act. This is the place where you are standing in queue to the door of death. Here is where no-one wants to jump the queue forward; but would gladly jump the queue backwards.