Queueing is being rebranded as a nice way to meet people. But that depends on what you’re waiting for | Emma Beddington

It’s hot – fancy a frozen yoghurt? Probably not, given that ice-cream exists, but a New York Times reporter recently queued for an hour to experience the city’s fro-yo craze with 74 other patient souls, long enough, she wrote, to “feel affection for my cluster of line, the kind of camaraderie you develop with fellow passengers on a delayed flight”. The yoghurt, while fine, was emphatically not worth the wait. That’s surely also true of the UK’s current slew of viral bakeries, pizza joints and, improbably, baked potato spots. Can carbs really be that good? Maybe, but I’ll never find out: reaching the head of an interminable queue only for the person in front of you to take the last treat is psychological violence I won’t put myself through, and queueing at a mayonnaise vending machine – another real NYC phenomenon – is my idea of hell.

But queues are everywhere now. Even in my hometown of York, where formerly the only people queueing were tourists waiting to enjoy the stench of rotting herring and latrine at the Jorvik Viking Centre (or to patronise our sui generis tearoom, Bettys), locals line up at brunch spots and bakeries. How and why have queues, previously an occasional annoyance, become ubiquitous?

Well, we do love them. The Queen’s coffin queue was a phenomenon so significant that social psychologists studied it; the Wimbledon Queue, capitalised on the website as if it’s an event in itself, has a downloadable code of conduct. And our proud queue stoicism – the fruit of a wartime propaganda exercise to prevent food shortages creating unrest – means we’re unlikely to balk at waiting for pastry. Then there’s the viral factor: social media means long lines are often a feature, not a bug, whipped up by paid-for influencer enthusiasm and manufactured (or real, to be fair) scarcity.

But what if there’s something else going on? That NYT writer pondered whether it wasn’t about fro-yo, but the queue itself. “Free public space is disappearing from urban infrastructure. Not enough people are meeting their neighbors … So maybe the lines for viral foods are just due to get longer and longer each year, like an IRL bar chart of American loneliness.” It’s not a new theory: the Londoner explored it in January, with the co-owner of one viral bakery (Toad, in Camberwell) calling their queue “a rare communal thing that brings people together with a shared interest that isn’t to do with drinking”, and noting the “nice interactions” it stimulated. On Substack, writer Lauren O’Neill described bakery queues as places to “arrange to meet friends for a two-birds-one-stone catch-up”.

So standing in a breadline (fine, brioche line) is now considered a sociable, community-building trip out? There’s a trend at the moment for identifying your personal “recession indicators” and queueing for a pain au chocolat being reframed as a convivial treat might be one of mine. But maybe I’m missing the point? Perhaps it’s part of the broader shift (still, I suspect, cost-of-living related) towards low-key, no-frills “soft socialising” – people getting together for “admin nights” and hanging out in other humdrum ways. If it’s a low-pressure way of feeling more connected, fair enough: the real treasure wasn’t the “everything bagel croissant”, it was the friends you made along the way.

I’m still wary of this rebrand of queues as a third space, though; they exclude anyone who physically can’t stand for an hour, for a start. And this is probably paranoid, but with dire warnings of a looming food crisis and imminent recession, the queue’s glow-up has echoes of wartime propaganda, as if we’re gently prepping ourselves for worse things ahead.

Also, wouldn’t it mean that by imposing austerity and Brexiting, arguably, the Tory government generously created third spaces where we come in contact with our neighbours? Sure, cuts meant closed libraries, leisure centres and youth clubs, but if queues are desirable community experiences, should we thank them for now enjoying luxuriantly long ones at GPs, NHS dentists (people queued from 5am when a new one opened in Bristol last month), A&E wards and border control? Bond over annoying waiting room music; share a laugh at your unflattering passport pics; find a new BFF by staunching each other’s bleeding! Patience is a virtue, yes, but I’m not sure it’s always the appropriate response.