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Every culture has its own queing system. And in Oulu it can be very confusing finds Ed Dutton.
They might seem like something insignificant which is the same everywhere in the world - but different cultures queue differently.
English people are often so obsessed with their rightful place in the queue that if they are alone at a bus-stop they will form an orderly queue of one. I was Sicily this summer and queuing, to the extent that it exists, is very different there. Many people - especially older people - don't seem to think twice about just pushing in.
But what are the rules of queuing in Finland or amongst Finnish people?
The first thing that I noticed is that many places where there might be an unspoken queuing order in England - such as when waiting to see your bank manager or an oncall doctor - in Finland you take a ticket. This avoids the need for any actual talking with strangers of the kind that might happen in this situation where you might say, 'I think you were next' or 'I think it's actually my turn.' This opportunity for polite negotiation, or the possibility of somebody unfairly taking your turn, is completely removed with the ticket machine which can be found at the KELA office, in most banks . . . even at the doctors.
Thankfully, you do not have to take a ticket in order to buy a drink in a pub. Here the unspoken rule is used and you assert you place in the queue by the order in which you make eye-contact with the barman, who somehow remembers the order. This is exactly the same in England, Holland, the USA and many other countries. This queuing order is quite important and you are clearly breaking the rules if you allow the barman to serve you when there is somebody else who has been waiting longer.
The rules of supermarket queuing require some getting used to. As in the UK, the idea of 'sod's law' - whichever queue you join will inevitably move the slowest - is an accepted part of how things work. There is no expectation - nor is there anywhere in Finland other than at some railway stations - that you join longest queue and end-up, in the rightful order, in front of one of the cashiers. This way of doing things is increasingly used in British supermarkets but not in Finland. When a new cashier opens their till it is a matter of every man for himself. The person behind the person being served is not given the opportunity to go to the new till. People just rush towards the new till as quickly as they can.
There seems to pretty much no queuing at all bus-stops. Finns sit and wait for the bus and when arrives they seem to surge forward, especially if the bus is packed, to try to get on as quickly as they can. Although, weirdly, Finns seem particularly interested in queuing when it involves a Ryan Air flight from London Stansted to Tampere (or the other way around). Many foreigners have observed that when the flight staff open the boarding the gate the Finns will immediately stand up and queue in an orderly fashion. They will then almost all be told to sit down as the plane boards numbers '1-49' and then the rest. The foreigners generally just remain seated.
But there is something quite cut and thrust to Finnish queuing. If you're queuing but not doing so clearly you may well find that somebody just pushes in front of you and it won't occur to them to ask, 'Are you queuing?' I've known expats who've missed their taxi at 3 in the morning in the freezing snow for making that mistake!
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