h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I hear that in the Uk people form nice uniform lines to get on the bus.
In the US people stand or sit around, but they try not to bump each other while getting on the bus.

I wonder what is the "line forming" etiquette in other places.

Also if you are not an older person, you should sit towards the back. The reason for this is that the elderly and the disabled sit on the front because they have trouble walking long distances.

Also it is recommended to have the exact bus fare, because in some places they will only accept exact change.

There are some people that buy bus passes or train passes. These are helpful if you commute often.

In my experience it is not always true that nice orderly lines for buses in the uk. I used to get the no. 3 in south London, as (quite often) buses that were due every 8 min seemed to arrive every half hour (sometimes in 2s or 3s) there was often a rugby maul to get on (as often another might not come along for a while which could result in lateness for work). But then again there is normally a fairly orderly Q for our buses.

Amazingly the british can sit around yet still know which order they turned up in so that even if they do form a melee they generally do know which order to get unto the bus.

Us British like to queue for everything.
Busses, Supermarket Check outs, Ice Cream vans, even, to my horror, in some pubs and bars.
Whenever more than one brit has to wait for something, we will automatically arrange ourselves into neat single files. And woe betide anyone who tries to push in, or queue jump.

It is very strange behavior, foreigners think we are mad, after all, shouldn't it be survival of the fittest?? The biggest and strongest become supreme at getting served first? No, we are far too polite for any of that.

There are a few ways of getting round this curious tradition. Try carelessly walking up to the head of a bus queue to read the timetable, just as the bus rounds the corner.

The hardest decision we have to make is with multiple queues. Do you join the short queue that is moving slowly, or stay in the slow queue that seems to be moving fast.
Whatever choice you make, you are guaranteed to ensure that the queue you choose comes to a complete standstill, while everyone else moves along like lightening.

One thing you should never do while queueing is ask someone to hold you place while you quickly go and do something else. Once you leave a queue, for any reason, you have to rejoin it at the end!

I'm not sure if i'm allowed to do this or not, but I posted this in the Queues conversation a day or two ago, it probably belongs here as well. Is there an easier way to connect between conversations, some sort of handy way of introducing a cross-reference? I'm sure there is!

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A sociological observation, with no moral.

Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester. (the central bus station)

Two adjoining bus stops, at five-thirty PM.

At the 219 / 204/5 stops to Hyde, Ashton and Denton, there are VERY orderly queues, snaking round the Gardens in Indian-file, with two hundred people patiently awaiting their bus. No fuss, no bother, just a well-defined queue.

Next door, the 192 to Stockport via Longsight.

this is a great unwieldy scrum of a bus-stop, a mass of people fighting and scrambling and all trying to get on the bus first, regardless of the fact the 192 is probably the fastest and most frequent bus-service in Manchester.

Same city, same people, same place. But does this mean people in Ashton and Hyde and Denton are better behaved and better brought up than people from Longsight or Stockport?

As I'm from Stockport, this question bothers me...

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