Why the other queue always moves faster
You pick a lane at the supermarket. The lane next to you starts moving. You switch. Your old lane moves. Everyone has lived this, and everyone believes the universe is doing it to them personally.
The universe is not. Over a year, your lane and the other lane move at about the same rate. What differs is what you remember.
When your lane wins, nothing happens. You reach the till, pay, leave. There is nothing to notice, so you notice nothing. When the other lane wins, you stand there watching someone who arrived after you walk out before you. That is a small loss with a face on it, and losses with faces stick.
So the memory is skewed by design. You have a full record of every time you lost and almost no record of the times you won. Ask yourself the last time your lane clearly beat the other one. You will struggle, and it happened about half the time.
This matters beyond queues. It is why people are sure they always get the slow train, the bad seat, the referee who hates their team. The losses are counted and the wins are not. It is worth knowing about yourself because the feeling of being unlucky is often a feeling of being human with a normal memory.
The queue is fine. Stay in it.
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