Biggest irritant: jumping the queue
Multiscope, a Dutch online marketing agency, has polled 1,970 Dutch people to find out what their biggest sources of irritation are. Most of the complaints were about anti-social behaviour: for instance 68% of the people gave “jumping the queue” the top spot. When asked what sort of remedies people would agree with, stricter, harsher, and more immediate punishments were at the top of the list. Almost half of those polled agreed with the suggestion that the Dutch police force could take a leaf out of the book of the para-military police force of Spain. (Is it me, or do these measures sound a bit harsh for “jumping the queue?)
The entire top 10 was:
- Jumping the queue
- Dumping waste
- Dog poo in the streets
- Cars not keeping their distance
- Spitting
- Loud portable music
- Loitering
- Second hand smoke
- Loud mobile phone conversations in public
- Not receiving right of way
Although a lot of countries believe they are the number one complainers of the world, there are differences in what people actually complain about.
(Photo by Diliff, and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license version 2.5.)
Funny, it turns out to be the biggest source of irritation, yet it’s also a thing most commonly found amongst Dutch people! For some reason, I too find that the Dutch are highly annoying with their “I don’t have to wait like the rest of the people” mindset.
A thing I seem to see working effectively is by just telling those people where the line begins. “Hey buddy, the line starts all the way over there.”. This simple line will usually cause some irrelevant blabber from the queue jumper, but in most cases they do end up at the end of the line.
Dutch people should learn how to stop anti social behavior by just speaking up (look at the loud portable music in trains. It seems I am the only one actually asking if they could turn it down a notch – and they _always_ do that, if you just ask!).
Cars not keeping their distance is the number one reason for car accidents in the Netherlands.