September 18, 2008
What’s Up With Those Whole “Queuing” Thing?
So last week Tuesday I found myself at Cape to Cuba’s cigar bar in Long Street, murdering a few Fish Eagle’s and partying like it was 1999. Even though I knew it was actually 2008. I was just IMAGINING that it was 1999 you see, I wasn’t being delusional or anything.
It’s just a little game I like to play.
Anyhoo, the cigar bar is a cool place to murder drinks and make drunken chit chat, but I felt like shaking what my mother graciously gave me at birth, and so decided to head on over to Tiger Tiger in Claremont, where I could dance to commercial pop songs, whilst arrogantly splashing out on overpriced bottles of Pongracz.
And so, amid a rock music montage showing us driving through the streets of Cape Town, my publicist and I arrived at the Claremont night club at about 10:30pm, to find about 10 people in the queue in front of us.
This didn’t really phase me, as I was fairly confident of arriving inside, quicker than you can say “Blueberry pancakes”, and then watch Bruce Willis shoot John Travolta as he comes out the bathroom in Pulp Fiction, a scene which never really gelled with me as everyone knows you should ALWAYS take your piece in with you when you go to the loo, ESPECIALLY when you expect the disgraced boxer to return to his apartment and collect his watch which Christopher Walken kept up his arsehole in that Vietnamese prison camp all those years.
Rookie f**king error, Vincent Vega.
Plot holes aside though, a half hour passed by slowly, like that South African swimmer without arms or legs, the one that did the 100m breaststroke in the Paralympics, and yet there were STILL 10 people in the queue before me. Behind me, there were now about 40-50 disgruntled youths, waiting to get in.
Just then, I spotted an inebriated young man sauntering out the club, smiling graciously as he received a blowj*b from the girl he was with. I pulled him aside, congratulated him on receiving fellatio whilst walking (which is a pretty amazing feat if you think about it) and enquired as to the status of the club’s patron numbers inside.
He looked up, gave his girlfriend some money to buy him a beer at Tin Roof, and then murmured, “It’s not very full inside.”
“It’s not very full inside”
(I know I’ve written it twice, but I’m just repeating it for dramatic purposes, to drive home the point I’m trying to make. Stop being so pedantic about everything.)
So there we were, standing around like timid little dogs before they’re drowned, boiled and then sold as edible snacks in North Korea, only to find that Tiger Tiger WASN”T EVEN THAT FULL. (I shouted that bit)
Sean from SLXS mentioned the fact that there is a massive drinks special from 8pm-10pm, and it’s the management’s way of not losing too much money, but we arrived there well after that. It clearly just seems to be a big ego stroking thing on Tiger Tiger’s part, who clearly enjoy the sight of a massively long queue outside their little establishment, even when this doesn’t need to be the case.
Eventually we put our prides in our pockets, popped our collars, and moonwalked down to Tin Roof with all the other disgruntled people who couldn’t be bothered to stand around the Atrium on a Tuesday night, and closed up Tin Roof instead.
Not impressed with Tiger Tiger right now.
Get your act together, gentlemen.
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At Tiger Tiger, we don’t slow queues down to allow for less people so we can give away less booze for free between 8 and 10pm. unfortunately the door lady is only one person and can only get so many people thru the door at once. I’ve worked the door; there are a lot of very slow people out there. (you know your coming to club, where you have to pay an entrance free, but now this person has asked that person to hold they wallet and then when at the door, only after being asked for their cash do they realize they still need to pay. Then there are those girls who have bags, big enough to fit a human in - you can imagine how long that takes to find they wallet. There are hundreds of chancers every night as well, they will stand there holding the queue up trying in every possible way to get in for free… Blame the people in front of you in the queue, not the club.
Then what may not seem full to you is unfortunately our fire limit. Tiger may not put more than a curtain amount of people in the club at once, we would love to get more people in. a queue is not only frustrating for you guys. Everyone knows a queue upsets a lot of people and an upset person is not exactly going to come spend millions. Things are also very unpleasant if the club is too packed. Ive been to Tiger on some of the nights where there have been too many people let in the club. not only does one wait in a queue to get in the club, now you have to wait to get drinks, which takes you half an hour to fight for a spot at the bar. More queues to get into the bathrooms. I think you can see where I’m going with this.
I hope this can give you a little more understanding form an insider’s point of view.
Thank you.
Its related to psychological phenomenon called cognitive dissonance.
When people have to wait in a queue for a long period of time they expect that the experience they have inside will justify the wait. However if they get inside and it does not quite live up to their expectations they experience cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is when a person hold two conflicting ideas at the same time.
In this case the person expected to have a good time but was let down. So the person can either conclude that he or she was an idiot for queuing that long. Or the person can to lie to him or herself and pretend to have enjoyed it more.
This way these clubs are perceived to be better than they would have been perceived if they had short queues.