When I usually walk into a shop, I see a queue and understand that that could be where I can join in for a while. The Brit in me has a great understanding of queues. There is a severe respect that I believe other nationalities don’t fully understand. Not the forced queue that you experience the moment you land in Orlando, that snakes all the way from the airport to Cinderella’s Castle at Disney World. There is a collective consciousness that you join when you are ready to submit. Of course, there is an equal respect expected from the retailer to enable the people to transition in and out of queue membership without the frustration level getting above a 6. (6 is a normal level of frustration for a Brit.)
Gail’s has created a special version of this that forms a queue that is the collective consciousness of beige and entitlement. If you fall into that Venn diagram, the convergence of the circles is the Gail’s Bakery queue.
It’s a special entity to observe. This privileged organism becomes an unimportant rendering of NPCs or movie extras. With no lines or independent thought. The GQ (Gail’s Queue) consider the food behind the glass simply as scenery, and will do the usual idle animations of checking their phones every 7 seconds or taking a selfie. Contrast that with the Cockapoos that have taken the role of a high school reunion of the most positive and most encouraging school leavers group you could ever imagine, no comparison, no strutting, all praise. And I have no choice but to imagine that as a possibility because there is no way to enter the Gail’s thanks to the blockade.
The blockade in question: The Fortnite fortifications of prams. The challenge is presented: “Can you spot which buggy doesn’t have the brake applied? No touching.”
Before the spell can be broken, one of the members of staff has to notice that there is a queue. It is critically important that baristas are treated with the respect they deserve, and Gail’s does at least achieve this by ensuring they know their responsibilities are behind the espresso machine and no further. They may notice that the queue is expanding like a slowly growing pile of flour from a ruptured pack. But they aren’t allowed to engage with the queue at all. The staff will eventually look up from their conversation with the fridge, but until then, the stasis is set.
“What can I get you?”
Utter confusion as the background extra suddenly becomes the protagonist. They don’t know who they are or where they are. They don’t have any idea what they came in for, and it is only at this moment, despite staring through the glass for a full 6 minutes, do they finally see the products available to them.
Now comes the careful dance between server and customer. The customer names an item, and the server will put it in a bag. They then ask, “Would you like anything else?” And the process is repeated ad infinitum. At some point, the loop is escaped, maybe a “yap” from a Pomeranian or a call from the bank that their loan is approved, so they can confidently purchase the items they’ve selected, and they’re asked if they want a coffee with all of their sourdough.
“Yes, please”
It has to be a combination of disparate elements that justify the barista’s next action.
“Name for the coffee?”
“I call it the … Extra dry dirty flat white… -uccino”
“No, what’s your name?”
In the first essay of this series, I mentioned the name-amnesia that strikes at the counter. But observing it from the back of the queue is a different experience entirely. Our protagonist—let’s call him Sebastian, because the universe has already decreed it—doesn’t just forget his name; he seems to undergo a total existential collapse at the sight of his own driving license.
He stares at the plastic card in his wallet as if it’s a relic from a lost civilisation. Car ownership? In Zone 2? The concept is as alien to him as a sourdough loaf that costs less than seventeen sterling. He isn’t just a customer anymore; he is a man trapped in a loop, unable to process his own identity.
This isn’t the life he thought he had, and tries to flee, but his exit is now a mess of interlocking wheels and blankets from the White Company. As he makes progress towards the door, a woman in a body-length puffer jacket asks him if he’s “done with the sugar”, and this causes a set reset, and he has to join the queue again.
I avoid the queue entirely by ordering via the app. But the staff didn’t know that was possible. We’ll do more on them another time.
