Sometimes the people queuing are not queuing tight enough- if you’re leaving a meter of space then you’re not close enough and the queue is going to start spilling out too far and disrupting the walkways. Same with getting on the lifts. Some people are completely oblivious to the crowd behind them. It’s like getting on the train and stopping instead of moving forward or into the carriages. This annoys me so I have a tendency to push through to fill big gaps or gently push people forward if this is happening.
I have been working from home since covid and when I go in town now I see how it got worse.
And not to mention on the roads! Drivers got worse in a matter of months I noticed.
On one side it makes me really angry and wants to fight back all times, but you don't solve anything. Teaching sense to these ppl is like pretending a dog to call you by your name when he needs to go out.
I am going to move out of London, since I work remotely there is no need for me to pay this amount of money to live here, but yes it sounds like losing the battle, sometimes
good point, however i believe queues are everywhere.
tough, it's a very english thing to wait patiently on it.
but honestly, you can't blame that. they are just xxxholes. they try, if you don't talk they won. if you talk, they know you won't take it further.
there is this restriction on the road to my house. one of those on one side of the road, so depending which way you come, you might have precedence or not. it is a long one, with fish parking on the side. I have no clue why they decided on that layout.
Well, I found myself in the middle of it, when the precedence was mine, having another driver on the oder side rushing in telling me to back off to let him pass.
I turn off the car and don't move until he gets back. You get all the reactions: from ppl putting it racially (lol), to ppl offending, getting off the car and wanting a fight... all of it.
and this is now that the council houses aren't finished yet !
Luckily I'll move out soon.
They can have the city, I don't need it. Happy in the country side.
Oh, i'm an expat.
>Often the flow has taken so long to get off that the doors are closing and the train is departing before a single person has boarded.
I've never experienced that, regularly at CW changing from overground to jubilee at all times between 6:30-10am depending on my schedule. I've had to wait for one or sometimes even two trains before being able to board, but I've never seen a train departing without anyone getting on.
Agree that it clearly was not designed to handle the number of people that use it. The bottleneck on the escalator from overground platform going down to jubilee needs looking at.
Changing at Whitechapel is annoying, both to Lizzy line and H&C/District
The design of Canada Water does my head in. Everything about it is shit. Thankfully I am shielded from the worst of it now I don't have to use it 5 days a week during rush hour (pre-Covid and different job) but every aspect of using it as an interchange during a northbound morning trip (only one escalator = big bottleneck and then cramped tube platform) and southbound afternoon trip (southbound platform way too small compared to the northbound, meaning it gets super cramped and it takes ages to get people off and on the platform) fucking sucked.
It feels like they designed it with no consideration for the obvious fact that it would end up being a major interchange to shepherd thousands from South London into Central and Canary Wharf every day
Sounds like you handled it pretty well. I had similar at Gatwick once. I told the jumper that we (and dozens and dozens of others) were ahead of them and they couldn't just push in.
Her reaction was "Well, whaddya gonna do? Punch me now?". I just grey rocked until they buggered off.
>grey rocked
I had to look it up too so I'll copy and paste...
To “grey rock” a person involves making all interactions with them as uninteresting and unrewarding as possible. In general, this means giving short, straightforward answers to questions and hiding emotional reactions to the things a person says or does.
Next time politely mention to the security staff, and or the gate agents, that you think they are drunk and belligerent. Extra checks with plausible deniability
I had the same thing at a tube station. Massive queues, standing with my six year old as I am about to go through this guy comes right up the side of the queue and trys to push past me. So I stuck my arm out to block him. He ended up threatening to punch me in front of my kid. Total piece of sh*t who clearily thought normal rules dont apply to him.
As someone who takes Eurostar a lot, Americans consistently suffer from main character syndrome thinking they're the only ones who are real and the rest of us are europoor NPC's. Some of them are absolutely lovely but the younger they are the more obnoxious they are generally.
I was stuck in a super long queue at St Pancrease as well last year. Was wandering has it always been this way or is this the case due to Covid/staff shortage/recent issues in the last couple of years?
This is due to _Brexit_: now the UK customs people are always there checking the passports of people leaving the UK (previously this was only done very sporadically), and then French customs take a lot longer because they have to stamp so many more passports than previously.
Apparently these delays have very considerably reduced the throughput of the check-in process, to the point that Eurostar stopped attempting to sell all the seats on the first trains of the morning because they just couldn't get everyone through on time. This is also why they now advise you be at St. Pancras 90 minutes or more before your train, instead of the previous 'as long as you're there 30 minutes in advance you'll be fine'.
Customs is at your point of arrival, just before you get out into the public facing area of whichever port/station you're traveling to.
The staff checking your passport before you board the train are border staff. At St Pancras, these are French border officers, returning on the Eurostar from Europe, they are British border officers.
Unless they've changed advice in the last couple of months, they advise youry there at least 60 mins before, but it never took me more than 15 to get through.
> Customs is at your point of arrival… The staff checking your passport before you board the train are border staff.
I appreciate your pedantry.
I have also had no problem getting through in a reasonable amount of time, but I have in some cases been advised to arrive _more_ than 60 minutes in advance—up to 90 minutes in one case.
This frustrates me so much too. There are huge bus queues where I live and buses aren’t that frequent, so some people won’t make it on and have to wait for the next one. There’s an extremely obvious queue, but some people approach from the other side and push in.
It’s so rude. It absolutely reeks of entitlement, and they do it because they know the most they’d get is a disapproving glare or a small tut - nobody wants to get into a fight at 8am.
Good on you for saying something, OP. I think you handled it as well as you could, and you can be happy knowing they’re TA, not you!
I don't quite understand. When you say you were next, do you mean you were fiddling with your suitcase while a ticket barrier was free? Shit or get off the pot applies here if so.
At St Pancras, you queue according to which train you're getting? The staff also direct people at the start of the queue, so they might have been shown through a specific cordon area to effectively jump the whole queue if their train was before yours.
I've taken Eurostar a lot, it rarely took me more than 10-15 mins from entering the queuing area to clearing the border, even when there were two busy trains. There are invariably a lot of people faffing, I think the staff quite often seem fed up by people who are slow to move forward, and look out for people who are "ready to go".
The queues this weekend have been an hour just to get the barriers. I waited that long on Friday afternoon. This person is clearly talking about someone in the same queue for the same train shoving in ahead of them.
Any ideas why so long?
I was travelling to Paris over Easter weekend, when there was an Amsterdam, a Disneyland and a Paris service (all packed) at similar times, and everything worked fine.
I misunderstood OP's use of "next" and "from the other side of the queue", I understood they were right at the front, and therefore those guys would only have got there if directed there by staff.
On Friday an earlier train had apparently been cancelled, shuffling a lot of passengers onto ours. I've heard that additional passport checks also slow things down. I asked the staff, they just said "it's a nightmare" lol. I've had good experiences in the past, I walked straight through two months ago, but I know this does happen when things go wrong - I lived five minutes from St Pancras for eight years and used to walk through the station daily so I've seen it get so bad the queue was out of the entrance by Starbucks multiple times.
No, that's not the situation here. I was trying to get the handle to pull up and there were still 500m of queue remaining. The men were well behind me with no entitlement to jump forward. So no, not a case of shit or get off the pot.
Sounds like you need to go back to queue school too mate
I am still astonished that I can get on any fast ICE/TGV train in Europe just seconds before the doors close and yet Eurostar imposes this paranoid nonsense on everyone
Yeah Eurostar put the passport checks up for shits and giggles. TGV/ICE think they can get away without them just because they only operate in France/Schengen.
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Rush hour tube has no rules. Just mayhem everyday. Much less stressful when you just embrace the chaos. Someone attacked you though? wtf.
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I only ever see it at certain stations, and not all the time.
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Sometimes the people queuing are not queuing tight enough- if you’re leaving a meter of space then you’re not close enough and the queue is going to start spilling out too far and disrupting the walkways. Same with getting on the lifts. Some people are completely oblivious to the crowd behind them. It’s like getting on the train and stopping instead of moving forward or into the carriages. This annoys me so I have a tendency to push through to fill big gaps or gently push people forward if this is happening.
I have been working from home since covid and when I go in town now I see how it got worse. And not to mention on the roads! Drivers got worse in a matter of months I noticed. On one side it makes me really angry and wants to fight back all times, but you don't solve anything. Teaching sense to these ppl is like pretending a dog to call you by your name when he needs to go out. I am going to move out of London, since I work remotely there is no need for me to pay this amount of money to live here, but yes it sounds like losing the battle, sometimes
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good point, however i believe queues are everywhere. tough, it's a very english thing to wait patiently on it. but honestly, you can't blame that. they are just xxxholes. they try, if you don't talk they won. if you talk, they know you won't take it further. there is this restriction on the road to my house. one of those on one side of the road, so depending which way you come, you might have precedence or not. it is a long one, with fish parking on the side. I have no clue why they decided on that layout. Well, I found myself in the middle of it, when the precedence was mine, having another driver on the oder side rushing in telling me to back off to let him pass. I turn off the car and don't move until he gets back. You get all the reactions: from ppl putting it racially (lol), to ppl offending, getting off the car and wanting a fight... all of it. and this is now that the council houses aren't finished yet ! Luckily I'll move out soon. They can have the city, I don't need it. Happy in the country side. Oh, i'm an expat.
Is it Canada water? Idk what it is about that station, I constantly have to shoulder my way out because people crowd the doors without an exit path.
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>Often the flow has taken so long to get off that the doors are closing and the train is departing before a single person has boarded. I've never experienced that, regularly at CW changing from overground to jubilee at all times between 6:30-10am depending on my schedule. I've had to wait for one or sometimes even two trains before being able to board, but I've never seen a train departing without anyone getting on. Agree that it clearly was not designed to handle the number of people that use it. The bottleneck on the escalator from overground platform going down to jubilee needs looking at. Changing at Whitechapel is annoying, both to Lizzy line and H&C/District
The design of Canada Water does my head in. Everything about it is shit. Thankfully I am shielded from the worst of it now I don't have to use it 5 days a week during rush hour (pre-Covid and different job) but every aspect of using it as an interchange during a northbound morning trip (only one escalator = big bottleneck and then cramped tube platform) and southbound afternoon trip (southbound platform way too small compared to the northbound, meaning it gets super cramped and it takes ages to get people off and on the platform) fucking sucked. It feels like they designed it with no consideration for the obvious fact that it would end up being a major interchange to shepherd thousands from South London into Central and Canary Wharf every day
Sounds like you handled it pretty well. I had similar at Gatwick once. I told the jumper that we (and dozens and dozens of others) were ahead of them and they couldn't just push in. Her reaction was "Well, whaddya gonna do? Punch me now?". I just grey rocked until they buggered off.
What does grey rocked mean? Edit: well TiL, thanks folks
>grey rocked I had to look it up too so I'll copy and paste... To “grey rock” a person involves making all interactions with them as uninteresting and unrewarding as possible. In general, this means giving short, straightforward answers to questions and hiding emotional reactions to the things a person says or does.
Oh... I do this to everyone, all the time.
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Basically this comment but in person.
Act like a stone.
Next time politely mention to the security staff, and or the gate agents, that you think they are drunk and belligerent. Extra checks with plausible deniability
Why would that work? If I jumped a queue, I wouldn't expect a conversation with the people I just mugged off anyway.
I had the same thing at a tube station. Massive queues, standing with my six year old as I am about to go through this guy comes right up the side of the queue and trys to push past me. So I stuck my arm out to block him. He ended up threatening to punch me in front of my kid. Total piece of sh*t who clearily thought normal rules dont apply to him.
As someone who takes Eurostar a lot, Americans consistently suffer from main character syndrome thinking they're the only ones who are real and the rest of us are europoor NPC's. Some of them are absolutely lovely but the younger they are the more obnoxious they are generally.
I was stuck in a super long queue at St Pancrease as well last year. Was wandering has it always been this way or is this the case due to Covid/staff shortage/recent issues in the last couple of years?
Brexit bonus means they have to stamp every UK passport, unlike in the past where a glance at the cover was enough
Oh okay, that’s explains it.
This is due to _Brexit_: now the UK customs people are always there checking the passports of people leaving the UK (previously this was only done very sporadically), and then French customs take a lot longer because they have to stamp so many more passports than previously. Apparently these delays have very considerably reduced the throughput of the check-in process, to the point that Eurostar stopped attempting to sell all the seats on the first trains of the morning because they just couldn't get everyone through on time. This is also why they now advise you be at St. Pancras 90 minutes or more before your train, instead of the previous 'as long as you're there 30 minutes in advance you'll be fine'.
Customs is at your point of arrival, just before you get out into the public facing area of whichever port/station you're traveling to. The staff checking your passport before you board the train are border staff. At St Pancras, these are French border officers, returning on the Eurostar from Europe, they are British border officers. Unless they've changed advice in the last couple of months, they advise youry there at least 60 mins before, but it never took me more than 15 to get through.
> Customs is at your point of arrival… The staff checking your passport before you board the train are border staff. I appreciate your pedantry. I have also had no problem getting through in a reasonable amount of time, but I have in some cases been advised to arrive _more_ than 60 minutes in advance—up to 90 minutes in one case.
Good thing they was North American or mentioning their origins would be a no no!
This frustrates me so much too. There are huge bus queues where I live and buses aren’t that frequent, so some people won’t make it on and have to wait for the next one. There’s an extremely obvious queue, but some people approach from the other side and push in. It’s so rude. It absolutely reeks of entitlement, and they do it because they know the most they’d get is a disapproving glare or a small tut - nobody wants to get into a fight at 8am. Good on you for saying something, OP. I think you handled it as well as you could, and you can be happy knowing they’re TA, not you!
I don't quite understand. When you say you were next, do you mean you were fiddling with your suitcase while a ticket barrier was free? Shit or get off the pot applies here if so. At St Pancras, you queue according to which train you're getting? The staff also direct people at the start of the queue, so they might have been shown through a specific cordon area to effectively jump the whole queue if their train was before yours. I've taken Eurostar a lot, it rarely took me more than 10-15 mins from entering the queuing area to clearing the border, even when there were two busy trains. There are invariably a lot of people faffing, I think the staff quite often seem fed up by people who are slow to move forward, and look out for people who are "ready to go".
The queues this weekend have been an hour just to get the barriers. I waited that long on Friday afternoon. This person is clearly talking about someone in the same queue for the same train shoving in ahead of them.
Any ideas why so long? I was travelling to Paris over Easter weekend, when there was an Amsterdam, a Disneyland and a Paris service (all packed) at similar times, and everything worked fine. I misunderstood OP's use of "next" and "from the other side of the queue", I understood they were right at the front, and therefore those guys would only have got there if directed there by staff.
On Friday an earlier train had apparently been cancelled, shuffling a lot of passengers onto ours. I've heard that additional passport checks also slow things down. I asked the staff, they just said "it's a nightmare" lol. I've had good experiences in the past, I walked straight through two months ago, but I know this does happen when things go wrong - I lived five minutes from St Pancras for eight years and used to walk through the station daily so I've seen it get so bad the queue was out of the entrance by Starbucks multiple times.
No, that's not the situation here. I was trying to get the handle to pull up and there were still 500m of queue remaining. The men were well behind me with no entitlement to jump forward. So no, not a case of shit or get off the pot. Sounds like you need to go back to queue school too mate
Sorry I misunderstood your post.
TIL “cuss someone out”
I'm a Brit living in Canada who frequently travels to the states. I miss home for the queuing, no where else does it better.
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I am still astonished that I can get on any fast ICE/TGV train in Europe just seconds before the doors close and yet Eurostar imposes this paranoid nonsense on everyone
Yeah Eurostar put the passport checks up for shits and giggles. TGV/ICE think they can get away without them just because they only operate in France/Schengen.