Norm Enforcement is Hard, But People Do It Anyway

While H.E. has his virtues, and can often help you think straight, sometimes you just have to tell him to fuck off.

Yes, exactly. Whose idea was homo economicus, anyway?

Kieran, every time my partner and I pass an airport ‘family/disabled’ bathroom, we tip our cap to your small act of norm-enforcement bravery. If you were making this up, I’m a little crushed.

Aside from the sadness of making me more of a jerk, living in NYC has also made me appreciate more that if you cut a line here, someone will tell you, loudly and with expectation that you will obey, to f-off back to the end.

“How does it hurt you?” That, my friends, is the coolly rational voice of homo economicus.

Well, as someone put it: First they came for the…

Rational voice it is, this Homo Economicus.

You know what that story reminds me of? Life in a refugee camp!

Someone should really write a blog post about how similar the experiences of purchasing an iPhone and being a refugee are!

some info on whence cometh H E? is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus of course. Something about people who didn’t like J S Mill.

I had a slightly similar smack down experience, while entering a very crowded IMAX theater for a showing of one of the Potter movies. It was me, my wife and my then 10 or 11 yr old son. We got to the place where one begins peering around for seats, and there was, oddly, a long stretch of seats right in the middle, a few rows back of the front. I moved toward them, and a middle aged woman with some sort of Christianist shirt logo pops up and tells me that all these prime seats are “saved” (she wasn’t making a Christianist pun, I don’t think). I”m talking about 15 or 20 seats here. I began to turn away, and thought, “she can’t do that!” If she wants a block of seats together for a group she can choose some funkier seats, but she can’t stake out a claim to prime seats on the basis of “dibs” or something like that. So we plopped down (to some surprising applause from the row behind — the Christianist woman was pretty obnoxious), and another couple followed our lead.

Typically, I quickly began feeling sheepish and “pushy” myself, but luckily the bunch for whom the seats were being saved was made up of a bunch of teenagers — 16 to 18 I’d say — with similar shirt logos and an apparent disinclination to stand in line like the rest of us shlubs — a perfectly reasonable disinclination, especially in a teen ager, but there are consequences for that, or trade offs if you like.

Anyway, the movie didn’t lend itself to the IMAX screening, but it was a memorable evening.

for the record I”m an economist, though maybe not an example of homo economicus (that’s who economists study or fret about, maybe. I expect the prime homo economicus types are the guys who sit through the first few weeks of Econ 101, and then move on)

In grade school, cutting was a big offense. But strangely, we never minded if kids cut in line behind us. If somebody tried to cut in front of you, you told that kid to get behind you. The cutter just had to find somebody weak enough to cut in front of who couldn’t enforce the no cutting rule.

I guess grade school was more law of the jungle than the Apple Store.

By the way, Robert Frank’s book Passions Within Reason makes a compelling case for the evolutionary advantages of irrational responses like Arthur’s.

But if you tell stories like this to economists (well the one I have lunch with a lot, anyway) they’ll just tell you that Lance’s norm enforcing behaviour reveals a preference for norm enforcement and so he (assuming consistency, blah, blah, blah) can be understood as a utility maximizer.

(And he’d tell you that Lance’s subjective response is a problem for the psychologists to worry about, and that econ bypasses psychology.)

Um, you’ve got people standing in queues for several hours to buy a mass-produced product. Fascinating behaviour sociologically, but I’m not sure that much cool rationality can be expected in that context.

sit each side of him and talk all through the movie

So because you couldn’t successfully inconvenience one guy, your backup plan is to irritate everybody around him? Nice.

This is not just economics, my impression is that the legal system works the same way – you can’t challenge a law (or some practice) unless you can demonstrate that it hurts you personally. For example, in order to challenge the “under God” in the pledge of allegiance you must have a child who is forced to recite it.

I think there is a certain logic in it. If the girl behind doesn’t protest, that, effectively, means that she consents and that’s all there is to it. This is a reasonable angle, I think.

And what about people enforcing other, less obvious norms – not obvious to you, but dear to them; what about that guy who stops you on a street and tells you to get a haircut or more appropriate clothes? I know, it doesn’t happen much anymore, but isn’t it the same sort of thing? Isn’t guy a jerk and you the innocent victim?

(The situation I found problematic was the simultaneous exit from our regional opera performance, if context be required.)

So, Lance hooks up with the Asian girl, right?

What is the Irish expression? Ah yes, cute hoor.

Experiments with monkeys have shown that if you offer two monkeys a raisin each, or two monkeys a peanut, they’ll take them, but if you offer one monkey a raisin and the other a peanut, the first will accept the raisin with alacrity while the second may refuse their peanut.

You might say the second monkey is cutting his own nose off, but he’s doing norm enforcement: you don’t give that other monkey a raisin and try to fob me off with a lousy peanut, buster!

Actually, this could potentially be a good illustration of the difference between pure alitruism/inequality aversion (in which case you wouldn’t do anything) and a preference for fairness.

“norm enforcing behaviour reveals a preference for norm enforcement”

Of course the key to making this non ridiculous is to ask whether changing the cost of enforcing a particular norm affects the frequency with which the norm is enforced.

Relatedly, the above situation is probably not pure “preference for fairness” but that + something else. The breaker probably signaled his inherent assholness – a sort of “I am a sort of person you dislike” – to the enforcer, (for example through his “self-congratulatory smart-assed grin”) making it easier/less costly for him to enforce that norm.

What if when Lane turned around, instead of seeing a guy with a “self-congratulatory smart-assed grin” he saw an old lady looking up at him sheepishly (in place of the Asian girl of course). Or a steamy super model looking at him coyly.

Another way – what if instead of being towards the front of the line the event occured while they were still towards the back of the line? Hence affecting many fewer people? This is also why abb1’s explanation doesn’t work.

22. The protagonist is Lance. We figure the would-be queue jumper to have a decent probability of being a “real life” shit. Lance “might,” despite his decent behaviour here — “who knows?”

Re “rationality” — does no one agree with noen at 6 that the rational response is that the protagonist increases his odds of being hurt in future by acquiescing to the jumper?

I agree it’s norm enforcement, and to me the most interesting aspect of that is the force of those emotions. How they are like: “Ah, excuse me homo economicus, could you just step aside for a moment; I’ll take this one.” It is facinating in commercial contexts how much passion rises up when somebody starts bending the rules. “Yeah, that’s not how you qualify a mortgage!” I recently had a clerk call security because I was applying four coupons to my purchase.

But, just for giggles. At the end of the day Lance will own a iPhone. That wait in line will be a very large portion of what he paid for it. It seems plausible that allowing somebody to cut line behind him lowers the value of his waiting; and hence lowers the value of his phone by a large amount. So maybe his homo economicus does think that since it harms the value of his iPhone, it does harm to him personally.

One of the many reasons why the emotions rise so strongly in these situation is that suddenly the rules are unclear. That’s a risky situation and the body quite naturally goes on high alert.

Radek, why doesn’t my explanation work?

I’m assuming a norm here (pretty typical, by what I’ve seen) where any queuee has the right to let one person cut in front of him/her – the spouse or a friend.

In this case, the girl behind – by not protesting – simply exercised her right; no one else is affected.

Since there was not violence or threat of violence involved, the reason why she chose not to protest is irrelevant.

Thus the only reason to hassle the guy is, as you said, his appearance and manners. Obviously standing in line for hours make people cranky, but one should try to restrain oneself.

May I suggest that a character be devised for sociologists et al to use, based on the visual and behavioral model of Dudley Dooright, to be named Norm N. Forcement? He could carry a clipboard, for example.

Isn’t this incident just an expression of wounded pride? Lance spent hours waiting in line for his gadget. The man behind him implicitly tells him that only losers wait in line for hours for this gadget; ergo, Lance is a loser. Lance gets angry and invokes authority (“I’m going to tell”) until the guy backs down. Lance proves he’s not a loser.

I hate it when someone who’s about to cut in asks permission from just the one person in front of whom they’re about to step. That one person is not in a situation to say yes on behalf of everyone behind him/her.

Why isn’t she? It’s not feasible to ask all of them. She seems to be in as good a position to take such the decision as anybody…

@40: Based on the description, it’s not clear that there is much she could have done. She was behind doors, she may not have even seen this, nor is it clear anyone would have listened on the inside to someone protesting from the outside.

Based on the description, they could see her outside “with her arms folded across her chest”, so I assume she could see them as well. And since she’s now the first to get in, there’s gotta be someone right there, the guy who guards the door.

…everybody behind her is affected…

But what if it was her boyfriend – would the norm allow him to cut in front of her? I think so. In that case, like I said, she simply exercised her “can let one person cut in front of you” right and while everybody behind her is, indeed, affected, they have no grounds for complaining.

This is a depressingly common approach by such people to any spark of tension/conflict…

This is not an approach, it’s another ‘norm’ – control yourself, don’t get agitated. This Lance guy violated this very important norm and now he feels that might be an asshole too.

The points made in the discussion convince me that the behavior being described — the line cutting and dibs-on-seats-making — can be given an economic read as free riding on norm observance by the vast majority. It’s something one sees often in traffic — a person driving recklessly or agressively and maintaining personal safety by relying on the defensive driving habits of everyone around him (usually “him”).

As roac observes above, it’s behavior that would probably not be advantageous without the majority behavior.

I don’t know if this is an urban legend or not (it inspired Vladimir Sorokin to write a book about it, so presumably there is some basis in fact), but apparently people in the Warsaw Pact states used to join queues without knowing what was actually on sale once they would get to the front of the line.

And the longer the queue, so the thinking went, the more scarce and desirable the product must be, an assumption that would increase the size of already long queues significantly.

Aaron_m,
‘crime’ is a different concept than a ‘norm’.

When a crime is committed, the government (‘the people’) is the offended party.

When a norm is violated (for example, someone insulted you on a street or cut in front of you), you’re on your own. If ‘the people’ thought that cutting in is such a terrible and harmful thing to do, ‘the people’ would’ve made it a crime. Call your elected representative.

Your first point is correct, it’s exactly what I’m saying: the girl is the one, and the only one here who can decide if the guy is cutting in or has been allowed to get in. Without the girl protesting you have nothing, absolutely no grounds to intervene. If you do decide to intervene, then you are the one who’s breaking a norm.

the girl is the one, and the only one here who can decide if the guy is cutting in or has been allowed to get in

I do’nt understand how you can argue that not everyone behind her is affected by this as well and thus would have reason to complain.

Why isn’t she? It’s not feasible to ask all of them. She seems to be in as good a position to take such the decision as anybody…

Because every other person is also being cut. How can just the one person right behind speak for everyone else?

apparently people in the Warsaw Pact states used to join queues without knowing what was actually on sale

Having grown up in such a country, I have no recollection of this. (I suspect the issue, however, wouldn’t be that something is on sale, rather, that it’s available at all.) However, I do have a recollection of people making fun of those countries on these grounds. I do recall seeing plenty of queues in the US when I got here though. (From those jokes, you’d think no one ever queued up for anything in other countries.)

Because every other person is also being cut. How can just the one person right behind speak for everyone else?

Because she knows all that as well as you do. As I said, it’s not possible to ask everybody who will be affected so allowing one person (who seems to be disinterested and representative) to make the decision on their behalf seems eminently sensible to me.

May I suggest that a character be devised for sociologists et al to use, based on the visual and behavioral model of Dudley Dooright, to be named Norm N. Forcement? He could carry a clipboard, for example.

So Norm N. Forcement would, like Dudley Dooright, be Canadian I assume?

This would seem to be appropriate – since I’ve moved from the States to Toronto, I’ve found that Canadians can have startlingly complex queuing norms.

For example, Torontonians spontaneously form into one line feeding into several cashiers, ATMs, etc. whenever space permits and even when there’s no signage enforcing this rule. I’ve even enforced this norm myself, saying to a woman at a grocery store, “The line for both registers is over there.” (Like Lance, I had not been personally inconvenienced – I was already at register 2 while the woman jumped the queue to get served at register 1.)

An even more complex example is in a particular streetcar loading area in one of Toronto’s subway stations (Spadina & Bloor, for locals). When the streetcar stops for loading, both the front and rear doors are available. People line up in an orderly double-queue for the rear doors, but the people going in the front doors are always an unruly mob where the first ones to get to the doors get in. This allows both those who prefer unqueued entry (mostly recent immigrants from East Asia, it seems) and those who prefer to queue (mostly people raised in Canada) to choose their preferred method. As far as I know, this local norm arose spontaneously (there are no signs dictating either behavior), but it’s been perfectly consistent for at least the six years that I’ve passed through this station.

Maybe there’s something about the Apple Store itself that gives rise to this sort of thing.

A few years ago I went down to the store in Soho (NYC) because of trouble with my iPod. I waited patiently for a full hour to talk to someone at the “Genius Bar.” Finally my number was called, and as I approached my assigned genius, another guy walked up alongside me and proceeded to address said genius: “I just have a quick question–I want to get a new [Mac something or other], but I want to make sure that they’re not still using the chips made in Thailand, because my last one had chips made in Thailand and it gave me a lot of trouble and then I heard that a lot of people had trouble with them.” “Sorry, sir, I really don’t know where the chips on the new [MacSomething] are made.” “OK…I was just wondering if you knew, ’cause like I said, I heard the problem was this one manufacturer in Thailand…” “Sorry sir, I can’t help you with that.” “So you don’t know if they’re made in Thailand are not?” “No, sorry sir.” “Well, I just thought you guys might know, because I really want to make sure that I don’t get stuck with the chips made in Thailand again…”

Finally I pipe up: “I’m sorry, but I just waited an entire hour to get up to the counter. There’s no reason why you can’t take a number and do the same.”

Guy looks at me incredulously for a couple of seconds, snorts out a huffy “Excuse ME!”, and stomps off.

File under “Rude New Yorker Story III.A.2.xxiv,” or “Rude Apple customer Story”? You be the judge.

Regarding whether it’s acceptable to allow a spouse/significant other/etc. to cut in line, I don’t think it’s always necessarily okay.

I think it’s almost always okay if you intend to carry out a single transaction between the both of you, and therefore the person isn’t really holding anyone up.

I think it’s borderline in cases like boarding a plane where you’re making everyone in back of you wait longer but not really because it’s easier for a family to get on as a group since they’ll be in adjacent seats.

And I think it’s not acceptable when you’re bringing someone into line for a completely separate transaction. For example, it’s fine if a person waiting for an iPhone brings their spouse into line so they can buy one together, but it’s not okay if they’re each going to buy their own phone.

I definitely don’t think it’s okay to always assume you have one “free pass” to get someone into line – if everybody did this, the people at the back of the line would never actually get to the front.

When a norm is violated (for example, someone insulted you on a street or cut in front of you), you’re on your own. If ‘the people’ thought that cutting in is such a terrible and harmful thing to do, ‘the people’ would’ve made it a crime. Call your elected representative.

Your first point is correct, it’s exactly what I’m saying: the girl is the one, and the only one here who can decide if the guy is cutting in or has been allowed to get in. Without the girl protesting you have nothing, absolutely no grounds to intervene. If you do decide to intervene, then you are the one who’s breaking a norm.

I believe the norm is to err on the side of polite disagreement, but then again when someone violates that norm by posting a crock of nonsense with such arrogance I’m not sure it’s necessary to do so.

When a norm is violated you’re by definition “not on your own” in the sense that otherwise it wouldn’t have been a norm that had been violated.

The assertion that you are “on your own” in terms of responding to the violation is a fabrication part that I see no reason to accept. What page of the norm guidebook is this one pulled from?

Regarding crime vs. norm, yes there are actions that “the people” think are terrible and harmful and have opted to classify as crimes.

There are also behaviors the people think are lesser evils, but do value as important enough to have evolved group standards around. These are often called norms!

One can probably think of norms that one personally wishes weren’t so, but this is no more an argument that all norms should be rejected, then the existence of some bad law about chewing gum is sufficient to argue that we should therefore not have laws against murder.

To counter your flippant remark of “call your elected representative” one could just as easily say “lobby your peers and neighbors to adjust their norms”.

In this case I’d say what motivates this queueing norm hinges on the value “the people” place on the idea that bullies shouldn’t just be allowed to run roughshod over the less assertive.

The assertion that the girl is the one and only one who has any grounds to intervene is another totally arbitrary invention.

In fact, basically it sounds like most of your argument could be boiled down to this:

“I’ve decided that violations of group norms can only be considered to affect one person at a time”

IMO, there’s a much stronger argument in favor of the claim that every person who waited in that line legitimately has grounds to intervene, whether they are in front of the woman, behind the woman or already at outside playing with their new iPod.

The alternative of an anarchy in which the most aggressive bullies get to the front of the line may be your vision of a better world, but thankfully I don’t think it’s the norm.

She’s the one standing outside with her arms folded across her chest.”

She’s standing out in the line frowning as I argue with him.

Contrary to what Abb1 is saying the Asian girl is protesting. She is also on the outside of the store with, one would presume, glass doors separating her from the inside. She is at the head of the outside line and Lance is at the tail of the inside line.

Good grief. I think most people feel, intuitively, that cutting in line to buy the latest fad toy gizmo is wrong.

Kant’s categorical imperative, right? Or the golden rule.

I think most of us don’t want to be around people who behave this way, nor do we want to be around the people who defend it.

“I’m assuming a norm here (pretty typical, by what I’ve seen) where any queuee has the right to let one person cut in front of him/her – the spouse or a friend.

In this case, the girl behind – by not protesting – simply exercised her right; no one else is affected.”

Sorry for not elaborating earlier – I was being rushed out the door as I typed last comment.

A person standing in a queue imposes a cost (an externality) on everyone behind them – essentially, their “processing time” (there’s a whole Queue Theory on this). Furthermore, the thing about queues is that knowledge of what’s happening is local. The people at the end of the line have only a vague idea of what’s going on in the middle and no idea of what’s going on in front.

Suppose that the queue-breaker has processing time of dt which is then added to everyone behind him’s waiting time. The person immediately behind him might have all the time in the world, value her own time lightly and hence might not much this extra dt she has to weight. But there maybe a person towards the end of the line who puts a much higher value on their time and they might very well have protested vigorously if they had been aware of the line-breaking.
However, a person at the end of the queue may not be aware that this extra cost has all of sudden been imposed on them. They might not even become aware of it after completing their transaction though they may have a vague idea that for some reason the whole process took a lot of time. In either case they do not know the SOURCE of the extra waiting time (maybe clerks went on break).

So it’s a (hidden) cost for many, and they all should have the right to protest, even if the person immediately after the line breakers doesn’t care.

No way am I believing that people that want iPhones would cut in line…..

That’s what the PC would do, not the Mac!

Take it back!

The only reason this all works (for the most part) is that most of us are willing to play by the rules, or to treat others as we would like to be treated, most of the time.

After all, if everyone felt as privileged as the line-butter, or his intellectual defenders, there’d be no line at all – just a mob where everyone thinks they deserve to be first.

Radek, I addressed your objection in comment 60. Standing in line is a privilege but it’s also a great responsibility. I argue that the girl should be kicked out, if she refuses to perform her queue-maintaining duties.

“You don’t suppose the whole queue should jump on him, do you?”

So, each person must stand alone against the boors and bullys and selfish slobs (and worse!?)

As some sort of social philosophy, that really sucks.

In fact, economically speaking the “join queue first, ask question later” strategy makes sense in any healthy, non-decadent society. Queue = good value for the money.

All right, all right, JR. You’re right. Sorry about that.

abb1 – so are you a line cutter?

N otsneaky perhaps it’s wrong to generalize to all Warsaw Pact countries or to all times in them? That is, it may have been true in some of them throughout the decades, but perhaps it was less common in some (e.g., by the time I was around).

Abb1, no, your example made no sense to me.

Best comment in this thread goes to anon.

Norm, schmorm. Give ’em all shotguns, let Darwin sort it out…

Herbert Gintis and coauthors discussed this in “Moral Sentiments and Material Interests”. Group solidarity only works if free riders are altruistically punished by those who are not losing directly themselves. Otherwise free riders look for the weakesr individual and take advantage of them, and in the long run the law of the jungle hierarchy goes into effect.

re: abb1: “In fact, economically speaking the “join queue first, ask question later” strategy makes sense in any healthy, non-decadent society. Queue = good value for the money.”

ahh, preferences are pretty uniform across individuals…that simplifies things for homo economicus! (unless they’re lining up for the opportunity to find a $20 bill on the street)

regarding the warsaw pact countries urban myth, I have heard the same story about the UK (just last week 2 british women behind me at the Brett Anderson concert made this comment – “we’re typical british aren’t we, we see a queue and we join it”); and I have also heard it said about Japan. I think it’s a joke about countries where queuing is very common and/or taken seriously.

(Interestingly, Japanese queue-reduction skills are very very good – no matter how long the line, you always know it will shrink fast).

Bad Jim, if you think that being asked to move one seat over in the cinema so two people can sit together is an “inconvenience”, you already don’t understand basic social norms. Further commentary hardly seems necessary.

Regarding my airline queuing example, I am always one of the sitters (what a bastard) and have never had a problem with luggage space. But in any case I don’t think the problem is exclusive to planes, it’s a general form of freeloading.

Abb1, you stick it to ’em!

useless overpriced piece of junk.

I hear you can make phone calls with it.

abb1 isn’t arguing that only one person has the right to complain when a group norm is violated resulting in harm to many people, he’s arguing that in this specific case, only the person immediately behind the cutter has “standing” to do anything about it.

That means his opinion is silly for reasons entirely unrelated to the ones for which he’s taking criticism.

His opinion is silly because it relies on mixing up a whole bunch of details about entirely different lines and social contexts, and using them to try to derive hard and fast rules about the social norms surrounding line cutting. Imagine Morbo here, screaming at you from your TV: NORMS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY! Norms are often extremely multifaceted, context sensitive sets of rules.

You can’t conclude that because a general norm exists permitting someone to permit a significant other to cut in line, that therefore every person has the right to let approximately one person cut in line. NORMS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!

And that’s just a start. The type of line matters, the needs of the people waiting in line and those of the cutter, the importance of reaching the front of the line, the relative harm created by adding one additional person to the middle of the line, the characteristics of the person immediately behind the cutter’s point of entrance, their ability or inability to protest, the characteristics of the cutter, etc, etc, etc.

It would be a huge muddle if processing these sorts of fairness norms weren’t one of the tasks at which human beings most excel, but they are and we can and we all know that cutting in front of a young woman without her permission because you want to buy a consumer good is something that makes you a douche.

we all know that cutting in front of a young woman without her permission because you want to buy a consumer good is something that makes you a douche

Yes, we do. So what? Every day, especially if you live in a city, you interact with dozens of jerks; and you’re probably one of them too (I know I am). People spit on the sidewalk, step on your toes, blow smoke in your face. They yell at their kids, they don’t pick up their dogs’ crap, get in the “10 items or less” line with 13 items.

Yes, we are jerks, most of us anyway, but it’s bearable enough as far as I am concerned.

Is it your purpose in life to set us all straight? Fine, but I’d rather wait for the guy with 13 items to get thru than listen to you lecturing him for 13 minutes.

“Is it your purpose in life to set us all straight? Fine, but I’d rather wait for the guy with 13 items to get thru than listen to you lecturing him for 13 minutes.”

This homo economicus assesment I agree with, partially. It’s good when self appointed enforcers of social norms know how to pick their battles. Sometimes they provide us with a social good, sometimes they cause more trouble than the original infraction. I think Lance is in the first camp, though like others above I agree that the group of people who’d stand in line for 3+ hrs to be “one of the first” to get an Ipod are one that has self selected for … well, not quite irrationality, but weirdo preferences, certainly.

Abb1 is hard to believe. As I understand, for him it’s OK to be a jerk, but it’s very, very wrong to be angry at a jerk, much less express your anger at one, except in certain narrow circumstances personally approved by Abb1.

Because if everyone in the world cut to the front of the line, the whole world would be free and everyone would be first in line. There would be no losers, and the kingdom of heaven would be with us.

Queuing rules are the nagging parent, and Abb1 is the rebellious kid. The world is like that, folks! Freedom is cutting to the front of the line! And screw you, mom!

“Herbert Gintis and coauthors discussed this in “Moral Sentiments and Material Interests”.”

I was thinking of Gintis when I made my comment above about there being a difference between a preference for fairness and (unconditional) altruism/inequality aversion. An unconditionally altruistic person would not care about this transgression since total waiting time for everyone has not changed. A person for fairness makes his altruism conditional on some kind of observable action.
And as Gintis says, people don’t really care about inequality, what they care about is fairness. It’s ok if someone’s a millionaire while I’m poor as long as I have a sense that that person earned their millions through some fair means (hard work, etc.)

I was at a grocery store in the express line (15 items or less in this case) and there was a woman in front of me with two carts filled with groceries. When the cashier told her that she couldn’t serve her in the express line, the woman then responded with the utterly useless suggestion of breaking her purchases in into several units of fifteen and ringing them through that way.

The cashier, to her credit, stood firm, at which point the woman commented that she didn’t see the sign, notwithstanding the fact that she bumped her head on the sign twice. When I pointed this out to her, she glared at men and bellowed “Who asked you?”

“We’re all playing by the rules here, ma’am. There’s no reason for you to try to obtain an advantage you’re not entitled to.”

Her response to me was a venomous shriek of “You eat shit!” The other customers and the cashier gasped.

I looked at her and replied, “If I do, I urge you to start running as I came here hungry and these delays are making ravenous.”

At that point, she stalked off and went to another line.

Public shaming is the key here.

Oooooh, parity! Such a smart argument, Abb1! What a clever little boy!

Probably Abb1 is just an annoying (though all too familiar) troll whose words should never be taken seriously about anything.

Most likely Abb1 is just an annoying (though all too familiar) troll whose words should never be taken seriously about anything.

Almost certainly Abb1 is just an annoying (though all too familiar) troll whose words should never be taken seriously about anything.

I’m medium sized, oldish guy, and I’ve had bigger, younger guys cut in front of me and give me a hard look. And the guy in the story in the post, hoping for an audience of Abb1s, made a creepy attempt to shame the guy who protested, and played the stupid anarchist card.

Many have felt for a long time that Abb1 is just an annoying (though all too familiar) troll whose words should never be taken seriously about anything.

For example, his “kick in the head” bullshit.

I’m just as willing to waste my time on the internet as you are, Abb1. If someone reports a linecutter to the authorities, I’m cool with that and for some reason you’re not. That’s your problem, as far as I’m concerned.

I have never been a line cutter. I do not understand your affection for linecutters, much less your indignation against anyone who reports one.

In general, I suspect that linecutters are multi-talented jerks who do other shitty stuff. They’re message is a mix of “I’m so charming that this will all be OK with you” and “I dare you to complain about this”. Either way I dislike them. In some cases there’s an element of physical threat, and in others there’s just the threat to stink up the place with whining and insults.

You’re not a line-cutter, but then you’re something else, assuming that you’re human living among other humans, of course. Maybe you’re dog-shitter-on-the-neighbor’s-lawn. Or you’re scribbler-on-the-margins-of-library-books.

You’re certainly someone who calls someone else “annoying troll” 5 times in a row, which must a violation of some very important norm for sure. You don’t see any problem with that, but that’s the point.

Get out of the way! I’m never going to get to comment #1!

Opinions differ about your brilliance.

In Singapore, line cutting will cost you 50 cane strokes.

Even if there is no allowance to cut in, still it seems to be responsibility of the cutee to fight off the cuter. You don’t suppose the whole queue should jump on him, do you?

Do you realize that everyone behind the place where he chose to cut has equal standing as a “cutee”? His cutting in line has changed the status of the person 200 feet behind him to the exact same extent that it has changed the status of the person immediately behind him. As such, your first sentence indicates that you believe everyone in line behind the “cuter”, but nobody in front of him, should gang up on him.

Well, abb1 actually has a point here: line-cutting is a terribly trivial infraction and the harm done to society by doing it is minimal.

There are many, many more serious infractions that do much more harm, but we regularly shrug off or even condone with a wink and a nod because we have committed them or might commit them ourselves one day: ever downloaded something illegally from the net? ever left a little litter in the streets? ever put everything in one big bag instead of sorting it for recycling? ever cheated on exams? ever been not a 100% upright in your tax return or other financial matters? ever driven slightly over the limit or ignored some traffic rules?

Unless the CT readership is made up of angels, I think it’s a fair bet that many of us have committed one or more of those antisocial acts. We don’t get overly excited about them because the harm done is indirect and long-term. Conversely we don’t cut lines ourselves and get so incensed by the line-cutting of others because it’s so in your face and the punishment is usually dished out immediately and publicly.

That said, line-cutting sucks, lol.

Novakant, Abb1 was criticizing someone for not agreeing to someone else’s linecutting, even though the linecutter was behaving in a transparently and egregiously jerkish fashion. We were defending the right of someone to refuse to agree to someone else’s linecutting. Abb1 seemed to be doing it on principles derived from fratboy anarchism, as though there were a high Kantian obligation to be a good sport about offenses declared petty.

The self-righteous, narrow-minded bastard.

my point was that ‘the norm’ is probably an entirely local phenomenon and has no larger bearing on what we do as a society.

and the ‘queue first’ thing was a joke i have heard about some places in India as well…

Cryptic Ned 131: Do you realize that everyone behind the place where he chose to cut has equal standing as a “cutee”?

Everyone behind the place suffers equal damage, which doesn’t necessarily mean they all have equal standing. As a member of the queue you are responsible for maintaining the element between you and the person in front of you. That’s the norm and it makes sense, because otherwise the queue would descent into anarchy, and we don’t like anarchy. Is this so complicated?

if you think that being asked to move one seat over in the cinema so two people can sit together is an “inconvenience”

?

sorry bad jim, I meant “dan”. oooops.

Only after I told a friend about this did the solution hit on us – sit each side of him and talk all through the movie, pass drinks to each other, maybe spill one.

Once my wife and I and our kids were just finishing paying for our food at the counter in a little cafe when a group of middle-aged women walked in the door and immediately grabbed the last table before we could walk back to it (without yet having ordered any food, of course). We walked over and I pointed out we’d been waiting and had bought our food and were just on our way to sit down. He response was “You snooze, you lose”. So we all just stood there near their table, our young children trying to balance their food and drink while eating. It didn’t take long for the women to (angrily) surrender the table and leave.

As for H Economicus — I believe H.E. is in favor of secure property rights and clear, strongly enforced contract law, etc. This strikes me as clearly falling within that domain.

Jesus, Abb1 is an annoying motherfucker.

I don’t think the logarithmic approach has anything to do with the “no backsies” rule. It’s simply that the backsies are totally unnatural; the line member granting a backsie makes no sacrifice whatsoever, and thus has no incentive to refrain from making this cutsie; this is clearly a gross injustice on the people behind this member.

Otherwise – very good point.

I still don’t understand why no one here would support the idea that the line member who allowed the breach is the one who deserves the death penalty. This member has committed treason, she is one of us who has betrayed us all. The cutter himself isn’t doing anything unconscionable like that; nothing shocking really, we all understand that everybody wants to be a member of our line.

Abb1, John Emerson is annoying motherfucker.

Nah, he’s not a motherfucker, just a grumpy old man, grampa Abe Simpson. Give him a break.

variant a friend of my sister’s told me at this party last night, offered for commentary if anyone cares:

earlier in the evening, FomS and her pal had been in line for a club (£10 entry, limited capacity): an exciteable guy (and HIS pal) had pleaded with them to be let in line before them, and offered to pay for all their entries if they allowed him in — they accepted this if he also paid for the girl behind them, which he quite happily did… they rationalised this by a. finding it all a very strange and amusing adventure, and b. feeling that entry manifestly meant more to him than to them and probably many others in the queue, as witness how much more than the going rate he was prepared to shell out, so why not?

(also: they said the club turned out to be lame, even if you’d paid £0 for it, but i don’t suppose this should be included in the moral equation)

Dave, all daughters know that about their dads.

Does anything change if, like me, you misread the guy’s name as Lance Armstrong?

Where did I say anything about any rebels? It has nothing to do with any rebels and everything to do with circumstances.

Now look, the guy was already in the Apple store.
It probably was John Holbo who came to replace his hallucinating USB port.
He gets in thru some other entrance, tech-support entrance.
He replaces the USB port and he walk in to the store.
He sees the queue, he realizes it’s that day when crazies line up for the new iphone.
He thinks it would be cool to get one now, today – what a story to tell in the university canteen.
He gets in line – the part of the line that’s inside the store – because he is already inside the store!
Yes, technically it’s cutting in, but is this really so terrible?