What’s the longest you’ve ever waited in line? How frustrated did it make you – enough to consider calling the police?
A Burger King line in Canada prompted one person to do just that. Authorities tweeted about it, headlines were written about it and the team at the “Something Offbeat” podcast decided to dig deeper.
“I admire that lady’s commitment to the Whopper,” said Dave Fagundes, a lawyer and professor at the University of Houston Law Center.
Why have we agreed to wait in line, and how do we know how to do it? We reached out to Fagundes, who is also the author of a paper called “The Social Norms of Waiting in Line” to learn more.
“The truth is – in many, many contexts, people use what we call social norms, informal rules that we all understand, that we enforce informally without any written law,” he explained.
Fagundes and host Mike Rogers explore why lines mostly work, why they sometimes work and more. They even touch on the story of people waiting in line for months for the reopening of the Casa Bonita restaurant in Denver.
Each week, “Something Offbeat” dives into stranger-than-fiction headlines. If you have suggestions for stories the podcast should cover, send them to us at somethingoffbeat@audacy.com.
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