Queuing, the great British sickness, is just as time-consuming as you had always suspected. On average, we spend 33 minutes a week standing in queues.
A study being published tomorrow will show that Britons waste 1.3 billion hours a year in some form of line, which works out, according to statisticians, at more than one day a year per person.
But the British are losing their stoicism: we are becoming increasingly impatient. In a survey of 1,000 adults, one third admitted they had queue-jumped. The Welsh were the most likely to perform such acts of treachery, followed closely by Londoners, which would surprise no one.
The survey also revealed that 36 per cent of men admitted that they had pushed in front of other people, compared with 26 per cent of women, who are either more polite or simply lying.
Most people said waiting for the loo was the most stressful queue, according to the survey carried out for a medical insurance company keen to cash in on dissatisfaction with the NHS. The second most unhappy time was queueing for a doctor's appointment, followed by waiting in an airport departure lounge.
It was George Mikes, a Hungarian-born writer, who pointed out nearly 30 years ago that 'the Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one'. Companies spend thousands trying to reduce queues for service and purchases, and entire theorems have been built around different strategies for banishing waits, but few seem to work.
There is also the conflicting idea that some people enjoy a good queue. This winter there will be a long trail of people outside Harrods in sleeping bags, waiting a week or more for bargains. Queueing for 12 hours for a Cliff Richard ticket is not unknown.
The analysis of how long we spend in queues casts doubt on whether the delays are actually being reduced, despite the wonders of modern technology. For example, many banks have introduced telephone banking, but experts have pointed out that going on to an automatic answering machine can be just as stressful as standing before the tills for half an hour.
Travel tailbacks are possibly the most blood-pressure heightening delays of all. Time wasted in jams is rising by about 5 per cent a year.
Professor Cary Cooper, an American-born psychologist who is head of organisational psychology with the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, said: 'The culture of queueing is changing in Britain. You're becoming more like the Americans - more intolerant, more impatient. We lead increasingly frenetic lives, rushing around all day, and that freneticism makes us more driven, more time-conscious.'
