This was an assignment I wrote soon after I arrived in Buenos Aires in March sometime. The point of it was to reflect upon an aspect of the culture within the city that had struck me after six weeks living there. Instead of writing about the Tango or the food or something interesting like that, i decided to do my report on queues. The thing about this assignment was that it had to be followed up by another piece of writing, looking at the same subject but with the benefit of roughly seven months more experience. That report will be posted shortly too. This is the exact version i submitted. Thank you to those on face-book i wrote to rally up ideas.
“An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one.” (Mikes 1946)
When George Mikes wrote this in 1946, he was, of course, poking fun at the proper English obsession with queuing, an obsession that Australians have inherited and made their own. There’s nothing worse than a queue-jumper. It’s not fair. It’s not right. It’s un-Australian. This report explores the cultural aspects of queuing in Buenos Aires, Argentina, from the perspective of an Australian customer and discusses the ways in which their queuing systems reflect upon Argentina’s appearance to outsiders.
Australians are world famous for their queuing. From an early age, young Australian queue jumpers are sent to the back of the line. If there are multiple Automatic Teller Machines available at a bank, Australians will form a single orderly queue, minimizing average waiting time and maximizing efficiency. Australians will always make sure those already at the bar have been served. Australians have a definite sense of social justice when it comes to queuing and it effects how they view the rest of the world.
Now, no matter who or where you are in the world, queuing to receive a service is usually not a pleasant experience. People don’t like to wait for a number of reasons. Amongst many others, they feel like they are wasting time, could be doing something more productive, or don’t like close contact with strangers. There are entire scientific journals, such as Queueing Systems which are devoted to the mathematics and mechanics of queues, and continue to research ways of making queues more efficient and productive for use in areas such as health, traffic, business and the internet. There are also many scholarly articles which discuss the social aspects of queuing and the notions of fairness, fear and anger that can be experienced while queuing.
From an Australian perspective, Porteños, or people from Buenos Aires, certainly aren’t the worst queuers in the world. When the line is short with a single server, like a line for train tickets, they will rarely jump ahead. If there is a person ahead of them near a service point, they will often ask if they are waiting in line. This is entirely different from many places in Asia or Europe, where the concept of queuing equals pushing to the front or loitering near a service point in order to dart in when it becomes available.
However, in Buenos Aires, as in many South American countries, there is a particularly unusual method of queuing (as it appears to an Australian). It can be experienced at large bars, fast food chains, bakeries, photo shops, retail outlets, pharmacies, stationary stores and many other places. This method generally involves waiting in two lines. In one of the lines, the cash transaction is made, while in the other, the desired goods are received.
The order in which a customer waits in these two lines is dependent on the business, but generally, at places such as large bars, or fast food outlets, the cash line is stood in first, a ticket received, and this is then given to the server who reads the ticket and presents the food, drinks, or whatever else is desired.
In other places, such as bakeries, pharmacies, and stationery stores, goods are chosen with the help of an attendant, after waiting in line to access that attendant, and usually presented by the attendant to the cashier for payment. It’s almost like a supermarket, but with someone picking the items you choose off the shelf, and putting them in a trolley you don’t have access to.
The two-line method can be a frustrating, annoying, stressful, and confusing experience for an Australian customer, because it essentially doubles the waiting time they’re used to. It can even mean tripling the waiting time if the customer is unfamiliar with the process; one line to get the product, only to be told a ticket is needed, a second line to get the ticket, and finally the return to the end of first line to get the product.
The two-queue system appears so inefficient to a foreign customer that it’s hard to imagine that there must be a legitimate and beneficial reason for it. A foreigner’s experiences of daily life within a country affect their views of the people from that country and something as simple as a queuing system is no exception. Quick opinions are often formed through conjecture due to an inability or disinterest to gain facts. The following attempts to replicate some of the quick opinions that may be formed and is based solely upon conjecture.
An obvious possible reason for the two line system might be to more easily monitor those persons in contact with the cash. In the two-line system, responsibility for the cash in the register often lies with just a single person. This reduces the temptation a cashier might have to steal money because they can be more easily monitored. If one takes this as the reason for the two queues, the Australian’s impression of Argentineans becomes one of dishonesty and distrust. Argentineans themselves have a phrase for their dishonest nature; la viveza criolla, meaning the cunning native. Employees appear willing to steal from their employers given the chance, and employers appear distrustful of the people they employ.
Once an outsider jumps to this conclusion, it’s easy to jump to others. A popular conclusion amongst foreigners is that many Argentineans working in these positions are so poor they need to steal extra cash to survive. This conclusion is an uncomfortable one, firstly because it assumes that most poor people are thieves, and secondly, because it assumes employers aren’t paying their employees enough to survive.
But perhaps the two line system has more to do with controlling the customer, and stopping them from walking away with goods they haven’t paid for. This is done by making them pay at the cashier first, or by keeping the goods behind the counter until payment. But thefts like this could also be avoided by using a single line if the cash was taken first and products given after payment. Waiting time would be reduced with no risk of ‘walk-aways’. ‘Walk-aways’ are discouraged in countries such as Australia through the use of electronic security devices that detect objects leaving the store that haven’t been paid for.
Three impressions of Argentineans are formed from this; one is that Argentinean customers are willing to steal given the opportunity, reinforcing our notion of la viveza criolla and the dishonest Argentinean. The second has to do with a cultural difference in the importance placed upon customer satisfaction. In Australia if a customer had to continually line up twice, they would complain and possibly not return to the store. The store would lose a customer, and future revenue due to a frustrating wait that could easily be avoided. The third is that Argentineans either don’t have the means or the desire to install electronic security systems, which indirectly reflects on their lack of wealth.
Perhaps the extra security measures are a result of the crash of the Argentinean economy in 2001. After a long period of recession, the peso hit rock bottom, unemployment rose as high as 20%, and the country defaulted on an $80 billion sovereign loan, the largest default in history. Thousands lost their life savings in an instant when bank accounts were frozen, and half the country descended below the poverty line. Under these conditions, it is understandable that an employer would keep a close eye on where his money is going and take measures to ensure it isn’t going into an employee’s pocket. Now, things are recovering. Argentina’s current unemployment rate is around 8% and dropping. But there is an interesting clue to suggest that the crash doesn’t actually have much to do with the use of the two-line system.
That clue is that the double line system is not exclusive to Argentina. Fellow travelers speak of the same system in Chile, Bolivia and Peru. Perhaps, like Australia, these countries have simply inherited their queuing systems from their colonizers. Perhaps the two-line system is traditional.
This seems unlikely though, because, like Australia, Spain currently employs the one-line system. If Spain ever employed the two-line system in the past, they’ve realized its downfalls, and moved on to the more efficient single-line system. I doubt that it’s tradition in Argentina, but if it is, they need to move on, as it’s time consuming.
However, it could be argued that the ticket-first system actually saves time, because access to cash registers is concentrated and servers do not have to wait to use them. There are examples of two line systems in Australia in which this is definitely the case. Examples include pre-paying for bus tickets or train tickets, theatre tickets, movie tickets or concert tickets. However, in all of these cases, the amount of time spent waiting to buy the ticket is usually made up by the amount of time saved when using it.
In Buenos Aires, the likelihood of the two-line system saving time is only good if cash registers are so few that servers must wait for each other to get access to them, or if a person plans to return to the product supply point multiple times with their originally purchased tickets. The simple fact is that the shorter the line, the more products sold because people are less willing to wait longer periods of time. But to create shorter lines, you need to employ more people, and install more cash registers. These things are expensive. So an outsider perceives the lack of cash registers and workers as a lack of money, and Argentineans are again perceived as poor.
Another downfall of the ticketing system, especially in crowded bars, is that if you lose the ticket, you lose the drinks. Obviously if a customer loses a ticket it’s their own fault, but often, when this happens, a customer can’t help but think that the bar knows that some of the tickets are going to get lost, meaning they won’t have to supply the products that been have legitimately been bought. If a person leaves the bar early with tickets in their pocket, again, the bar wins. Also if a ticket doesn’t print correctly and the bar person can’t read it, the drinks disappear. An outsider can’t help but think that the bar does this on purpose, reinforcing our idea of the dishonest Argentinean. If the bar doesn’t do this on purpose, an outsider wonders why they don’t change the system to ensure it doesn’t happen in the future, reinforcing our idea of a cultural difference in the value placed on customer satisfaction.
Another problem at bars is due to the length of the queues. Buenos Aires appears to have a serious problem with overcrowding in night clubs. In late 2004, 194 people were killed and another 714 injured after a fire broke out at the República Cromañón nightclub. Many died of smoke inhalation and many others were crushed to death as people tried to escape through inadequate exits. Because lines are so long to get drinks, people tend to order larger amounts to avoid returning to the queue later. Friends will also get them to cash their tickets to avoid standing in the line themselves.
This can cause confusion between the customer and the bartender. The bartender will take the ticket, serve only some of the drinks, and then move on to another customer. In the meantime, the original customer waits, and tries to say they’re missing a drink, while the rest of the line pushes from behind. The pressure from the line behind eventually causes the customer to leave short-changed. Again, perhaps it’s not purposeful, but an outsider sees it as rude, annoying, and dishonest.
Using queue theory, mathematicians can find the perfect balance between the amount of customers moving through the system and their waiting time, the number of service points and their installation costs, the probability and amount of theft by employees and customers, and customer satisfaction and their likelihood of returning. It’s impossible to know whether that balance has been found in Argentina, and it’s affected by things such as an employee’s level of pay and the value they place on employment. But it certainly appears inefficient, and unless every single employee is a thief, it’s highly unlikely the balance has been found within the current system.
It’s interesting that something as simple as queuing can provide insights into a people and their culture. To an Australian, the two-queue system makes Argentineans appear dishonest, distrustful, inefficient, overly bureaucratic, and unwilling or unable to think of better solutions to problems. Appearances that from experience, are entirely unwarranted. If Argentineans rethink this system, it will not only create better impressions on foreigners, but benefit their economy.
References
Mikes, G. 1946, How to be an alien : a handbook for beginners and advanced pupils, Wingate, London & New York.
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