Le Franco Phoney

For anyone considering a move to La Clusaz, please note that these foods are not available when dining out:

• Chinese
• Mexican
• Greek
• Indian
• Japanese
• British fat chips (from a fish’n'chips shop)
• basically, anything else that doesn’t revolve around cheese, potatoes and meat

Thankfully, England is well-stocked, and I took full advantage. The food was great, and so was the shopping. However, the queueing was not. When buying a bikini and a sun dress — both of which, ironically, I’d rarely wear (if ever!) in England, I spent more time waiting in queues to try things on than I spent looking for them. I queued for tables at restaurants, toilets, changing rooms, to speak with literary agents and even when picking up a pizza (it went cold). Normally, at least two toilets are vacant. Nobody notices. Similarly, the changing room attendant will watch the people line up, wait for someone finished to exit a changing room, count the rejected clothes, hang them up to be returned to the shop, and — oh, wait a minute: another person has come out so there are now two vacant changing rooms but nobody is allowed in yet because the attendant is still checking the exiting people’s clothes and hanging them up, and has not thought about giving those waiting the correct token for the number of items they’re taking in so that the queue can move without these hold-ups. I guess I’ve lived away from England for long enough now for this to bother me once more. It’s needless queueing, but the English have grown up with it, so they seem far more tolerant than me. And don’t even get me started on the restaurant that couldn’t seat us, nor take a booking for an hour’s time, nor call us when a table became available since they couldn’t reserve it an hour in advance.

So, my suitcase is stacked with new clothes and lots of Haloumi cheese (unavailable in my region of France). I will not miss the queueing in England, but I’m already missing the food.

Why is it that we lose our common sense when it comes to chairlift queues? A while ago, I was amazed at a single-file queue for a drag lift in La Clusaz and I got some interesting comments about queue mentality in different parts of the world. What I saw the other day was, in fact, the other extreme.

I made my way into the single queue at Le Cret du Loup chairlift in La Clusaz, allowing me to speed past the regular queue and fill an otherwise empty seat. As I passed through the electronic barrier, a French man in the slow, regular queue cooly and bluntly asked me where my instructor was. In dodgy French, I explained that the Ski School queue was actually on the other side of him, and that I was in a single queue. The man didn’t believe me until his friend pointed out the Ski School queue and said I was indeed correct. Err, thanks, tourists. Know your mountain. Queue mentality #1: everyone is righteous, whether they’re right or not.

As I approached the chairlift from the side, allowing easy access to get to an unused seat, I watched a father take his three kids onto the three-seater chairlift. That’s right, that’s four people. Now, this particular chairlift, like most, has three individual barriers that open and close in time with each new chair that rounds the corner. It is apparent that it is a three-seater chairlift well before the barriers due to lanes leading up to the barriers. And yet here was a dad trying to get all three kids on with him. Confusion ensued. A kid was pulled to the side by the man in charge of safety, but one of the other kids, concerned with the goings-on, fell over and the chairlift went over him. Queue mentality #2: it’s okay to ignore simple safety measures if it means you don’t have to wait for another chairlift.

No worries, they can get on the next chairlift together, right? WRONG. No, because meanwhile, at the barrier, a mother, child and stranger were watching all this going on, but still proceeded to go through the barriers, despite the apparent overpopulation of the previous chairlift. Once through the barriers, the mother and the stranger stopped, realising the next chair was taken. The kid was about six years old and continued on her way. The mother said half-heartedly: “Oh…wait…” while the kid kept going. Result? Another kid down, two kids crying that they’re not on the same chairlift as their dad, and a queue of people behind getting restless that the queue has slowed. Queue mentality #3: who cares about the welfare of those ahead when they’re holding the rest of us up!

I can understand why the man in charge of safety didn’t want to stop the chairlift: the first problem seemed simple, but it snowballed and turned into kid carnage. Someone slowed the chairlift for long enough to clear the mess of sprawled mini-people and the lift returned to normal. I somehow ended up on the chairlift with the little girl whose mum was now frozen still, unsure what to do without the reassurance of the barrier to tell her when to go and when to stop. How did I manage this? Well, I too believe in the three previous queue mentalities. I was righteous; I ignored simple safety measures; and, I was not happy that these kids were holding me up. Queue mentality #4: at the end of the day, we’re all sheep.

As much as the Brits are known for queueing, other European cultures are known for anti-queueing. I grew up in Australia where we seemed to find a happy medium. At the bus stop, you just hang around, and when a bus pulls up, nobody cares who should get on first. We just get on the bus. In London, I noticed the opposite: you queue at the bus stop, even if it means a line that gets in the way of others. It’s only fair, apparently, so that the people who have waited longest get on the bus for sure, while the late-comers may have to wait for the next bus. Of course, I didn’t realise this straight away, and I regularly stood at the bus stop wondering why people were staring at me. Nobody ever said anything, but I learnt over time, and I soon became the staring queuer, angered when another new-comer didn’t know the rules, yet too assimilated with the locals to actually speak out.

In the French Alps, however, it’s everyone for themselves. I’ve seen it in action, but I hadn’t ever thought about it until I got this e-mail from a blog reader called Jen. She said:

I’ve noticed that the French are amazingly patient and are able to wait hours for meals/rides/appointments but cannot seem to wait at all in a line. My 5 year old has been trampled repeatedly by adults in lift lines of less than 10 people! At the airport check in, even if there isn’t a crowd, everyone feels compelled to sneak ahead. I don’t get it!

Jen is spot-on with her observations! I’ve often been annoyed when waiting for locals to chat for anything up to ten minutes while I wait just to ask for a postage stamp, or the classic time at the supermarket when the couple in front of me didn’t have enough money to cover their purchase, so one left—I presumed to get to the bank machine around the corner—and after fifteen minutes, his partner revealed he had gone home to get more money. Home!

Patience is required often in France, but as Jen says, lift queues in ski resorts are like some sort of post-Christmas stocktake sale, with skiers and snowboarders pushing forward and sliding on the skis of those in front of them. Even when halted by a ski pole stuck between their skis, or a snowboarder’s foot stamping down near or on their equipment, the queue-jumpers know it’s just a temporary barrier that they see as a challenge to overtake before their queueing is over. And as Jen says, even a five-year-old is likely to get trampled during such a challenge.

But Jen, I have news for you: I have seen a perfectly orderly, single-file queue for a drag lift here in France. Yes, honestly. My French friend was just as surprised as I was, and the Brit in front of us was so excited at seeing such a thing for the first time in the “twenty years I’ve been coming here” that he felt the need to tell us so. None of us are sure why this rare phenomenon happened during a peak tourist time (Christmas), especially since the queue area was wide and unused. We wondered if they were all English tourists, but the French voices in front of us disproved that theory. To this day, it’s a mystery, and one that’s likely to remain unsolved.