FRENCH INCIVILITIES: QUEUE-JUMPING AS NATIONAL SPORT
The other day while queuing in line at my local grocery store on rue Saint-Dominique, I suddenly felt a familiar sensation — a vague emotion of mild disbelief that quickly hardened into bristling ambivalence.
My basket was loaded with the usual purchases — fruit, tomatoes, morning cereal, designer soups (asparagus, wild mushroom), ground coffee, milk, and a Camembert cheese (which, in keeping with established ritual, I had selected after opening and gently thumbing several others). It was nearly 7 p.m., the busy after-work rush. The shop was bustling, and the queue snaking towards the cashier was dense. Suddenly, an elegant middle-aged French woman, with only a prune yoghurt and large cucumber clutched in one well-manicured hand, gently slipped in front of me with a feminine daring that almost seemed beyond reproach.
I quickly inspected this lady as she made a delicate little pirouette to turn away from my reaction. She was smartly, and seductively, dressed like so many chic fortysomething Parisian women her age in the prosperous 7th arrondissement. But money doesn’t necessarily bring manners. Yes, it had happened again. A seductively devious French woman had just jumped the queue, right in front of me.
I was faced with a vexing dilemma: what do I say?
It’s a despairing truth that most Anglo-Saxons in Paris quickly learn about the French: they are insufferably unapologetic queue-jumpers. I am reliably informed that Italians are even worse at this particularly irritating social reflex, and I have no doubt that other cultures are just as bad. But I live in France, where shuddering at the minor incivility of queue-jumping has practically become integrated into the routine of my daily life. The French simply refuse to get in a line and wait their turn. They will adopt any stratagem, including blunt rudeness if necessary, to cut in and jump the queue.
Like most Anglo-Saxons, I regard queue-jumping as appallingly bad behaviour. It’s not that cutting in line never happens in Britain, North America, or Australia. Gaining an undue advantage at the expense of others is, alas, a deeply embedded instinct in human nature. In Anglo-American culture, however, cutting in line is considered unacceptably discourteous, and anyone caught doing it is rightly made to feel deeply ashamed. It may be explained by our Protestant culture and its obsession, albeit hypocritical, with appearances and rectitude. Or perhaps it’s our fear of public confrontation and its inevitable embarrassments. Whatever it is, Anglo-Saxons simply cannot abide queue-jumping. There have even been scientific studies on the subject.
In France, queue-jumping (like turnstile-jumping in the Métro) is such a familiar sight that, amongst the French, it rarely elicits a reaction beyond mildly disapproving indifference. But if you put five or six expat Britons or Americans around a dinner table in Paris and mention French queue-jumping, watch their eyes roll with impatience and disgust, usually followed by detailed anecdotes about this daily affront to good manners.
Why the French are so impossibly devoid of guilt on this particular point of public civility is an enduring, and intensely irritating, mystery to Anglo-Saxons. I was reminded of this recently when reading a Ben Macintyre column in The Times. Macintyre was recalling an experience in Paris waiting in a queue at a Left Bank taxi stand (in Paris cabs don’t circulate and pick up fares like in London and New York, here you have to find a taxi stand and queue until one deigns to show up). Waiting in line for a Parisian taxi, Macintyre looked up, astonished, to see the celebrated French “philosopher” Bernard-Henri Lévy appear from nowhere and blithely push his way to the front of the queue. What’s more, Lévy was accompanied by the famous Italian intellectual Umberto Eco (a French-Italian queue-jumping combo — there can be no worse).
This is how Macintyre recalled the incident: “France’s celebrity philosopher emerged from a nearby restaurant arm in arm with Umberto Eco. At that moment, a taxi, the first for at least 20 minutes, drew up: Lévy and his companion simply strolled to the head of the queue and climbed into it. As a Briton brought up to respect the supreme sanctity of a queue, I was outraged. But no one else voiced any objection to this egregious act of queue jumping.”
Macintyre was making a point about the arrogance of public figures in France — and in particular, the preening “BHL” in his trademark unbottoned Charvet shirts and macho Tarzan mane. Macintyre undoubtedly was right. On the same subject, I was listening to French radio one morning as an American journalist recounted how, when lining up at a car rental counter in Avignon, France’s ex-culture minister Jack Lang pushed through the queue and got prompt and obsequious service as dozens of others looked on helplessly. In France, however, queue-jumping is not restricted to intellectuals, politicians and media celebrities. In this country, queue-jumping is a national sport. It’s open season and fair game all year round, and actively indulged in by the French from every walk of life.
I first noticed the French penchant for queue-jumping when I moved to Paris some twenty-five years ago. In those days, I frequently went to the cinemas on the Left Bank where I lived. Invariably, I would be stunned by the unwillingness of young French people to line up in the queue to buy tickets. They would brazenly cut in, or bullishly push straight to the ticket booth. Sometimes couples would commit this outrageous incivility together, paired in their selfish disregard for others. Many years later when I lived in Fontainebleau, a small town by any measure, I often would see old ladies at the supermarket feigning confusion as they cut in to the middle of the queue with their basket of groceries. Always with impunity, of course. Who is going to upbraid an old granny?
The French react with annoyance, and rightly so, when Anglo-Saxons bang on about their legendary character traits — rude, arrogant, whingeing, unfriendly, inconsiderate, and so on. Grumbling about the impossible French is easy. The French should know, they never tire of slagging off Anglo-Saxons. It’s more interesting, however, to go beyond stereotypes and discover the origins of deeply-embedded social reflexes — including the French compulsion for queue-jumping.
The most flattering theory can be described as “moral chaos”. This theory contrasts the Anglo-Protestant fixation on moral virtue with the constant state of moral chaos that governs the French mind. For centuries the French have lived under a highly centralised and repressive state that regiments every public aspect of their lives — hence the rebellious instinct towards moral chaos in their private relations. Signs of this moral choas are everywhere in France — for example, reckless driving habits and the quickness with which French drivers curse one another, often while flailing their arms. Any foreign driver in Paris who has shown the courage to navigate the massive roundabout encircling the Arc de Triomphe can claim first-hand, and life-threatening, experience with a particularly terrifying example of French moral chaos. The moral chaos theory sometimes underscores French “individualism” (a positive word for “selfishness”) in contrast to Anglo-Saxon cultural pressures towards conformity (a negative word for civility). Thus, the defining vice of the French is their stubborn devotion to the cult of the “moi-je”. It’s all about Me. Burdened by so many state-imposed rules, the French have become subversively adept at violating them. In sum, to understand the French you must grasp the moral chaos at the core of their national psyche.
The second theory, an extension of the first, is that the French are devoid of guilt. Anglo-Protestant culture, founded on guilt, blurs the distinction between public and private virtue. Catholic culture, by contrast, is cynical and indulgent — especially towards private vice. An Anglo-Saxon living in France quickly comes to the conclusion that guilt is absent in French culture, especially since guilty actions rarely entail serious consequences. In France when a government minister is caught in flagrant conflict of interest, even stinking corruption, the alarming revelation rarely triggers a resignation in disgrace — indeed, the minister usually refuses resolutely to step down. No wonder minor incivilities like queue-jumping don’t weigh on the French conscience. The French don’t give a damn about getting challenged or upbraided for such trifles. This attitiude is often described as “je m’en foutisme”. True, the French fear the “gendarme” threat of the state, but they are fearless before the prospect of public disapprobrium in local bakeries and grocery shops. No guilt, no shame.
The third theory puts emphasis on the absence of a civic culture in France. The French, it is frequently observed, have grown spoilt by an omnipresent state that takes care of all their needs from cradle to grave, and consequently have failed to develop of culture of civic-minded virtues. The French state evokes high-mindedly abstracted principles like “intérêt général”, and words like “solidarité” and “geste citoyen” are batted about with similar deference to high symbolism. But this heroic language never finds concrete translation into real social interaction in daily life in France. Anglo-Saxons profess the virtues of fair play, consideration, courtesy, and civility. The French have many virtues, but these do not figure high on the list. If the French engage guiltlessly in queue-jumping like spoilt children, it’s because they fail to understand, or accept, the inherently uncivil character of such conduct. The French are deliciously, selfishly, devoted to themselves.
In my local grocery shop, I struggled against what I strongly suspected — that the elegant fortysomething French woman clutching her prune yoghurt and oversized cucumber was a spoilt child who had just selfishly jumped the queue. I knew I had only seconds to decide: was I going to say something or not? Damn it I will, I thought — if only to test her the fibre of her moral chaos confronted by my Anglo-Saxon insistence on a public display of good manners.
“Madame, il y a la queue,” I point out to her (interestingly, the word “queue” means the same thing in French, though it also has a vulgar meaning in French that will remain unexplored here). I was gently reminding her that there was a bloody line and would she please move to the back of it.
She looked up at me, seductively, with her emerald eyes and attempted to charm me with a fragrant smile as she protested coquettishly: “Un peu de galanterie, Monsieur!”
Ah, so that’s it. I should have known that it was my fault. My vice was a vulgar unwillingness to recognise the entitlements procured by a woman’s beauty, charm, and cunning. In short, my lack of gallantry.
Needless to say, I protested no further. And she continued to glide ahead of me towards the cash register, clutching her prune yoghurt and oversized cucumber.
