La queue

As an American I know I don’t have much experience standing in lines. I mean, we have Disneyland and airports and so on, but you sort of expect it there. In my daily life, they just open another register most of the time.

French lines might not be as bad as stories I’ve heard about Soviet Russia, but they’re still in a different league than I’m used to playing in. Four people buying train tickets last evening was nearly an hour. Everyone has a problem, and a story, and their own ideas about how the whole thing is supposed to work.

And there’s only one window, one clerk, and her job is to make sure every customer gets her full attention.