Tag / rubbish

by Ashley Mann

Queueing, and why I can’t do it

Now apparently we English very good at queueing, Bill Bryson even mentioned it in his book about England. I think its probably even edging its way towards becoming a recognised national trait, you know, in travel guides and stuff.

Unfortunately something has happened in my past, I couldn’t even pretend to know what it might be, that has resulted in me being unable to queue. Seriously. If I see a queue I will do anything to avoid joining it, absolutely anything. I would willingly walk in circles, juggling flaming chainsaws to avoid joining a queue (and I have very bad co-ordination so this would probably result in me losing a limb and then setting myself on fire and maybe dying). That’s how much I hate queueing.

I am generally a very patient person, however for some reason when I am forced to wait, in a line of other people, for a service or product something happens in my brain which results in a strange social freakout.

Some examples;

  • I desperately needed to go to the bank to do some important bank things, there was a queue so I immediately turned around, left the building and went for a completely pointless walk around the block (it was raining, so this was stupid), on returning to the bank I saw the queue hadn’t cleared so I went for another walk around the block. I repeated this 3 times (3 times! this is obviously stupid) before the bank reached a low level of busy-ness where I could walk straight into the bank and be served by the cashier without having to engage in queueing.
  • I needed to get cash out from a cash machine in town, it was saturday so it was busy. All of the cash machines I went to had queues so I ended up walking about a mile out of town to find a not-busy cash machine
  • I have gone without lunch at work on numerous occasions, simply because the canteen was busy

Almost without fail whatever solution I come up with to avoid queueing ends up costing me more time and energy than would’ve been spent simply joining the queue. And the sad thing is, I know this, I am completely aware that it is strange and pointless and a waste of time to go to such weird lengths to avoid standing in a line.

My lovely girlfriend finds this very strange, and she is right to, I find it a bit strange sometimes too. It’s almost like a reflex reaction at times, I’m walking away from a potential queue situation almost before I’ve even noticed what’s going on.

When I am forced to join a queue (e.g. whenever I go to a post office, post offices are never quiet, they ALWAYS have queues) I get incredibly annoyed almost instantly and start thinking things such as: how dare all these people get in the way of my incredibly important business (i realise this is stupid), what about all the important things I could be doing/learning/solving but instead I’m stuck here, that teleportation device won’t invent itself you know! (this is also stupid). And then I get annoyed at myself and how ridiculous a reaction that is to something as simple as basically having to wait.

So yeah, I’m rubbish at queueing.

by Ashley Mann

I want to ride my bicycle. Simple?

Right so every day I ride my bike, normally to work, and then at weekends and things I also try and convince myself that I am a cyclist and go for longer rides. And then every now and again I convince my friend Mat to go on cycling trips with me, and we go to places like St Albans and Sunderland (I know, I know, it sounds glamourous).

I’ve had the same bike for about 2 years now, when I got it I hadn’t ridden a bike for about 5 years and no clue what I needed. I got this which has been fine and good and works just as you would expect a bike to. But now I have decided that I want something more shiny and exciting. The trouble is, having narrowed things down a little I am now at the stage I reach every time I want to buy something that costs more than about £30.

I have decided I will buy either this, this or this. They are all pretty much the same price and have pretty much the same ‘stuff’ on them at a similar level of ‘good-ness’.

Now whichever bike I choose I’m sure will be brilliant, and shiny, and exciting. But because of the level of effort I have put into researching these 3 bikes I will be left with a huge feeling of “hmmm, but what if one of the other bikes would’ve been better“. The sad thing is that these bikes are SO similar in price and setup that I’m having to try and convince myself that I have opinions about things like bike wheels and whether or not I care about carbon or alloy gear shifters (note: I don’t care about these things). Now in the course of my research I have found out there are lots of people who have very strong opinions about these things and I have been a bit rubbish and tried to trick myself into adopting some of their opinions. Tried and failed.

I get very annoyed at myself every time this happens, it usually follows this pattern

  • I decide I want a thing
  • I do lots of research into the thing and narrow it down to thing a and thing b (there will usually be very little difference between the two, non-essential things like colour)
  • I realise I can’t possibly just be a grown up and choose between the two very similar things and I then resort to THE INTERNET (because surely there is someone on the internet with a far more informed opinion about things than me)
  • I read lots and lots of reviews and forum discussions and articles about thing a and thing b (overall consensus “both quite good”)
  • I choose one of the things based on a completely arbitrary point such as ‘the manufacturers of chosen thing seem like they’d be nicer to small animals’
  • I am wracked with anguish about whether I’ve made the right choice…FOREVER

And this is why I suck at buying things.