Queueing in pubs: a step too far?

A Wetherspoons pub that made customers queue in line for a pint has scrapped the rule after complaints.

The chain trialled a single-file queueing system at its Surrey Docks pub in Rotherhithe, southeast London, with notices telling customers to form an orderly line at one designated spot to “ensure fair service”. But it has now dropped the policy.

‘Slithery reptiles’

Brits are “fantastic at forming orderly lines for the loo” or queueing “to get into a popular restaurant”, said Metro, but “there’s one place where standing one behind the other just isn’t right: the pub”. But our traditional and “slightly chaotic ordering system is under threat” and now, instead of “standing their ground at the bar, chests puffed out like proud lions”, pubgoers are “snaking their way around the venue like slithery reptiles in single file queues”.

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Drinkers are “generally fairly decent”, said former barman Josh Barrie in London’s The Standard, they "know who’s next” and will “wave their hand or nod in that very British way to acknowledge the fact” – the “embodiment of pints culture”. But “pub queueing does away with all of that” and it “takes away everything good about a pub: community spirit, a little bit of edge” and “a light freneticism that rises like a tide” when “the British psyche needs nurturing”.

“We must not stand for this,” said Will Dunn in The New Statesman. “Pubs should be required to install ‘NO QUEUEING’ signs at every bar”, because queueing in pubs is “not who we are as a country”. The “gentle chaos” of the pub crowd “assumes that people are good, and gives them the opportunity to confirm it”, making space for those “less able to reach the bar”, and arranging themselves with “nods and winks”. But the queue “assumes that everyone is bad”.

‘Ensures fairness’

Pub queueing started during the Covid pandemic, when “lining up a few feet apart was a temporary requirement taken to protect pubgoers”, said The Wall Street Journal. But years later, “single-file queues still form” because “younger pubgoers say it ensures fairness, instead of the old informal system where bar staff must keep tabs on who has been waiting longer”.

It started earlier than that, said Ryan Coogan in The Independent. “I first observed it in 2015” in student bars, “so I assumed it was a case of younger people not really understanding pub etiquette”. But “as time went by”, I started to see it in “more traditional pubs”. Eventually it “seemed to be the norm”.

If you don’t like the system, it’s “up to you” to change it. “Next time you’re in the pub” and you see a queue, “confidently stroll past it and cosy up to the bar like a normal person”. You “might get some looks”, but you might also “start a trend”.