The evolution of waiting lines

The evolution of waiting lines: "There is a feline quality to standing in Indian lines. Certain parts of the man behind you—you don't know which—brush against you in a kind of public square spooning, the better to repel cutters. (Women do less touching.) Still, this is no deterrent to cutters. They hover near the line's middle, holding papers, looking lost in a practiced way, then slip in somewhere close to the front. When confronted, their refrain is predictable: 'Oh, I didn't see the line." // Snip from a New York Times story on the sociology of waiting in lines, and what the prevailing etiquette tells us about a given culture's place in global economic evolution. (thanks, Marina Gorbis)