Human Morality & the Lunch Line

The Commons line is long. It’s boring, it’s time-consuming, and no one wants to wait twenty minutes for lunch, especially when all the good food is going to be taken by the time you reach the end. Why not just cut the line? Why not just quietly put yourself in front of the person next to you? Nothing is stopping you. Plus, your friends are up ahead! If anyone asks, you're just waiting with your pals! And if you don’t have any friends, that's okay! You can just say you're going to get the hot meal! It’s so easy, and honestly, why shouldn’t you do it? You deserve to cut the line. You’ve spent enough time waiting and getting pushed to the side. This is your time to take back your dignity and show everyone else who’s boss! Those people waiting in line like sheep don’t realize how easy it is to cut! Whatever happens to them, however long they wait, they’ve earned it for being so weak. But not you! No, you are a taker! A leader! You’re someone who shapes your world; you don’t let others shape it for you! You're not just cutting the line to save time, no—it is deeper than that. You're cutting the line because you're better. 

Anyone who passed kindergarten and isn’t a sociopath will be familiar with the concept of ‘human morality.’ The guiding principles of humanity that guarantee, if followed, that we as a collective of human beings can create a functioning society. They are usually simple rules, things like “don't murder” and “don’t steal.” Things that all of us can not only understand, but can internalize. We know that murder is wrong, not only because it’s forbidden by law, but because it’s objectively a bad thing—that’s why morality works. And yet, there is a law of morality I believe to be as common as those aforementioned, that somehow seems to be lost to many at this school. Based on my introduction, I’m sure you can guess what I’m talking about: the cutting of the lunch line.

I’ve been at Bush for two years, and nowhere else have I seen higher amounts of lunch line cutting. Even if you don’t consistently cut the lunch line, after asking around, I found that nearly everyone who gets the Commons’ lunch has cut the line at least a few times. I myself have done so once or twice, more in frustration with others cutting in front of me, but cutting nonetheless. Colin Watson ‘29, in reference to a group of students he was eating with, told me, “Everyone here cuts. Every single person here has done it! It pisses me off.” And I can attest to it myself; I see it almost every time I wait in the Commons line. As Colin so eloquently put it, it pisses me off as well. But I want to give the benefit of the doubt to the average Bush student, so I have tried to understand the motivations and reasoning that lead someone down this path. 

I asked several students—who will remain anonymous by their request—why they have cut the line. The most common rationalization I heard was the age-old, “No one else is following the rules, why should I?” (Anonymous ‘28). Being morally right comes with a cost; waiting in line takes time. And normally, when everyone follows the rule, the cost is worth it. You wait in line with the assumption that you will wait a fair amount of time and get your food in an orderly manner. But when people start cutting, the system breaks down. All of a sudden, it stops paying to be moral. You are forced to wait longer because others are cutting, you don’t get the food you wanted because it’s already been taken, and the incentive to be moral and wait in line no longer exists. And most importantly, it stops feeling wrong. Everyone else is doing it, so it can’t be that bad, right? This becomes especially bad when someone with influence partakes: “Even our senator does it!” (Zack Ali ‘29).

But if the justification is only that others are doing it, then the solution is simple. Tell people to stop, and they should if everyone else does. But, unfortunately, this isn’t the case. Many people cut the line simply because they can. “I cut the commons line because if I were to wait, it’d be too long and I wouldn’t get the good food” (Anonymous ‘27). The justification for cutting the line was not derived from some moral rationalization but from simple selfishness. These are the “normalizers”: the people who started making line cutting normal and therefore acceptable for the rest of us rule followers. Whether because of impatience, greed, or plain selfishness, the cost of sacrificing morality was worth the benefit to the normalizers.

Now, obviously, nobody is going to admit that they cut the lunch line out of pure selfishness, so there will always be some kind of excuse. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on these justifications because they really are non-arguments that exist only to create the bare minimum of mental justification for an action people clearly know is wrong. Regardless, the two most common excuses I heard were, “I want to wait with my friends,” and “I’m in a rush.” To briefly explain why neither of these is valid, and simply to highlight the mental gymnastics we humans do to justify our own immorality, consider for a moment that everyone might also be in a rush, and the world doesn’t revolve around your timing. While waiting in line with your friends is certainly much more comfortable than waiting alone, cutting in line to do so is still entirely selfish—you are again prioritizing your own needs over the order of the line. 

 I know all these accusations sound aggressive—which they are—but the point isn’t to specifically target anyone; rather, it’s to explain something that all of us have done at some point. Every single one of us has let selfishness overwhelm morality. Whether that be by cutting a lunch line or not returning a shopping cart, everyone has the capacity to be selfish. However! This does not justify nor excuse it; I simply highlight that we all have immorality in us. 

But cutting the line is not only selfish—it’s also just flat out a bad long-term strategy. If you normalize cutting the line, then eventually we will find ourselves in a scenario where there is no longer a line left to cut. The entire system of cutting the line relies on some people maintaining their respect for the line and letting you get ahead. But once enough people notice that there’s no longer a point to waiting patiently in line, you’ll find yourself having to suddenly compete for who can shove their way to the front. And I assure you—based on the common perpetrators of line cutting I’ve observed—you are not physically dominant enough to be at the head of our new law of the jungle. 

We’ve established that cutting the line is bad both morally and practically. It’s an act we’ve all done and is rooted in selfishness, but is not necessarily always internally thought of as such. Practically, it really only leads to a collapse of order—something that won’t benefit anyone. But this has been a genuinely interesting reflection on human nature and an excellent study in how people act when unpoliced. There is nothing stopping anyone in the Commons from cutting the line, and the only actual consequence is the moral weight of your actions. And though I’m sure many of you have done it because you’ve become accustomed to it or did some mental gymnastics to justify it, now that you’ve read this article, you don’t have any excuse to continue. In other words, if you keep cutting the line, you are the reason we can’t have nice things.