Had a little bit of a run in with an American in a lift queue at a ski resort in Colorado. This suprised me, since lift lines in the USA tend to be a lot better that in Europe (where the bigger the elbows you have, the more likely to are to ever get to the front of the queue... )

We hit the queue at a BAD time - a load of racers trying to get back to the top for another run, several ski school classes etc. There was an "alternating" queueing system - except the ropes did not tighly enforce this (unfortunately!). An alternating queue for a ski lift is when a series of queueing branches meet, a set of people (3 people for a 3 person lift) will alternate (take turns) from each branch. We pretty much let the racers and ski school people get through (about 30 of them...), but had to virtually FORCE our way through to alternate in with the other branch of the queue (they just wouldn't let our branch of the queue alternate in). The guy behind me grumbled to his wife about people "pushing in". I turned round and said "it is an alternating queue!", which he had a big grumble about...

This really annoyed me, I am British and very up on "queueing". I do it and am often overly pollite (letting racers and ski school go first, in this example), it really hacks me off when people wont alternate (in an alternating queue) and then have a go at me for pushing in (when I have no choice but to force the alternation myself)

Boo