A chunk of the brick wall above the Salad King restaurant collapsed yesterday, freezing the traffic near Young and Dundas. Now all the cars are being redirected through the surrounding streets and the behavior exhibited by the drivers really amuses, and sometimes scares me. The small and quiet street near my building has been as clogged as 401 on a busy day. When the street is packed all the drivers patiently wait in a line, looking frustrated but being able to do nothing about it. When the traffic loosens up tho, people for some reason go crazy. Almost every car turns the corner, and then speeds down the empty street about half way, just to slam on the breaks and join the rest of the queue. Now, I know this is a typical thing people usually do while driving, but it bugs me. Why can’t drivers just calm down and take it easy? I mean, would you run head first if there was a brick wall in front of you, probably not! So why are they accelerating only to stop within a hundred meters?

With no scientific proof what’s so ever, I would guess this has to do with a need for an order. People hate to not know what is going to happen and need order to stay calm and to have a sense of progress, when that order is missing, they run (or drive) to quickly regain it. In a sense, mostly everyone waiting in any queue exhibits the same behavior. Think back to a time when you were waiting in line, in a starbucks or at any other store. When the front person moves past the cashier, the line moves forward, the next person moves, and the lines moves forward … on and on, always like that. Is there any particular reason why that happens, or more so, why it should happen like that? Not really. Sure, people don’t want to loose their spot in the line, but there is still no reason that everyone has to breath down each other’s neck, while waiting.

Occasionally I like to screw with the process and when a line at a grocery  moves, I don’t. When it moves again, I still don’t. Sometimes nothing happens, but most often I can clearly see a questioning look of some sort on those customers who are behind me in the line. Seriously people, get over it, there is a gap in a line, but it has absolutely no impact on your life or how fast you get to pay for the purchase!