Jumping the queue

Apparently a true story.

“In London in 2007, during a tube strike, a journalist named Gareth Edwards is standing with other commuters in a long, snaking line for a bus, when a smartly dressed businessman blatantly cuts into the queue line behind him. (Behind him: this detail matters.)  The interloper proves immune to polite remonstration, whereupon Edwards is seized by a magnificent idea.

“He turns to the elderly woman standing behind the queue-jumper, and asks her if she’d like to go ahead of him. She accepts, so he asks the person behind her, and the next person, and the next – until 60 or 70 people have moved ahead, Edwards and the seething queue-jumper shuffling further backwards all the time. The bus finally pulls up, and Edwards hears a shout from the front of the line. It’s the elderly woman, addressing him: ‘Young man! Do you want to go in front of me?’ ”

Oliver Burkeman in The Guardian Weekend, 28 August 2010