Exercise 06 [On the Pressure and Politics of Waiting in Line].docx

1、Exercise 06ON THE PRESSURE AND POLITICS OF WAITING IN LINEThe British queue up and the Americans wait in line, except for New Yorkers, who wait on line. No one seems to know the reason for this social idiom. It is something to ponder while waiting in /on line.Queues are a grim reality of city life.

2、While there seems to be no consensus on the city!s worst line, the ones mentioned most often in talks here and there were lunchtime lines at banks and post offices and, among younger people, movie lines and college-registration lines.Bank lines/9 said Mark Sloane, an investor. aNo matter what time o

3、f day you bank, the number of tellers is inadequate to the number of patrons. Even when the bank is open you see long lines in front of the money machine outside.nSupermarkets/5 said Ed Frantz, a graphic artist, who once abandoned a full shopping cart in the middle of a long checkout line. It was no

4、t a political act. The line was filled with coupon clippers and check writers/5 he recalled. And suddenly I had to walk away. Food no longer mattered. “In any line the fundamental rule is first come, first served, or what social scientists call distributive justice.5, Exceptions may be made, say, in

5、 fancy restaurants where the headwaiters have their favorites, but, in general the rule prevails.In theory, then, everyone should have an equal interest in keeping an orderly line. In practice, the interest varies depending on ones position in line. In most cases the strongest protests came from the

6、 immediate victims or the people directly behind the line jumpers. People farther down the line complained less or not at all, even though they had been equally penalized by losing a place.If misery loves company, so do sports fens. Dr. Leon Mann documented this several years ago when, as a Harvard

7、professor, he studied the long overnight queues for tickets to ball games in his native Australia.“Outside the stadium something of a carnival atmosphere prevails/9 he wrote in the American Journal of Sociology, The devotees sing, sip warm drinks, play cards and huddle together?5Like the teams they

8、had come to watch, the fans in line took timeouts. Some worked in shifts, with certain members leaving to take naps or eat meals, while others saved their places in line. Some staked claims in line with items of personal property such as sleeping bags and folding chairs. During the early hours of wa

9、iting, Dr. Mann noted, the queues often consisted of one part people to two parts inanimate objects.,排队，英国人说queue up,美国人说wait in line,只有纽约人例外，他们说wait on line.纽约人为什么要用这个本地特有的说法，看来还没有人能说得清，这倒是可以在 排队时好好思索一番的问题。排队是城市生活中一个令人厌烦的现实的问题。市里的什么队最长，大家似乎并没有 一致的看法，但常常听到人们到处讨论的，莫过于午饭时间在银行和邮局排的队。年轻 人中，经常议论纷纷的则是买电影票

10、和大学注册的队了。“银行里排的队最长了 “投资者马克.斯隆说。”不论什么时候去银行，接待顾 客的出纳员也总是不够。即使在营业时间里，也能看到银行外面的自动提款机跟前排 着长队。“超级市场里的队最长了 “书画艺术家埃德弗兰茨说。有一次，他离开等待付款 的长队将装满选购货物的手推车扔下不管就走了。这并非什么政治性行动。他回忆道：“长 长的队中又是剪赠券的，又是填写支票的。猛然间，我觉得必须离开那里，买不买食品 已经是无所谓了。”不管排什么队，基本的原则都是按照先来后到办事，或者用社会学家的话说，就是“公 平对待”。当然啦，例外情况也是有的。比如，高级饭店的侍者领班对某些人就给予优先。 不过一般情况

11、下大家是遵守这条原则的。因此，从理论上讲，每个人都会同样关心大家把队排好。但实际上，每个人的关注程度 又因各自在队里的位置不同而有所不同。在大多数情况下，反对加塞儿最强烈的是紧挨在 加塞者身后的人，因为他们是直接的受害者。站在队里后面的人则较少或者根本不抱怨， 尽管他们前边加了一个人，同样也吃了亏。如果说人们同病相怜，那么体育爱好者也是这样。几年前，哈佛大学教授利昂曼博 士在其祖国澳大利亚队通宵排队购买球赛入场卷的人群做了研究，并在他写的文章里描 述了这种情况。“体育馆外面呈现出一种狂欢节似的气氛，”他在美国社会学杂志上写道，“球迷 们唱着歌，喝着热饮料，打着扑克，互相紧挨着，挤成了一团。”就像他们要来观看的球队一样，排队买票的球迷们也有“暂停”的时候，有的互相倒班， 一些人站在队里看着位子，换下别人去睡一会儿或去吃饭。有的则把睡袋，折叠椅之类的 个人物件留在队里占位子。曼博士写道：“排队等候的头几个钟头，队伍里常常是三分之 一的人，三分之二的物品。”2/3