Such is the extent of the bizarre phenomenon, a campaign has been launched to educate younger drinkers on how to approach the bar.
The group Pub Queues, which has thousands of supporters, is leading the fight against the trend by calling out infractions and praising establishments challenging such behaviour.
The campaign states its purpose is to “end the recent phenomenon of queuing single-file in pubs”. It says: “We queue for the bus or for the checkout, not at bars.”
It champions establishments which put up signs to discourage drinkers from forming single-file lines.
One notice posted on the group reads, “Please stop queuing in a line. Come to the bar”, while another sign states, “If there is a single-file queue in front of you, walk straight past it and go to the bar.”
“This is not a post office, there is no need to queue like [you’re at] one,” another reads.
Supporters of the anti-queue movement send tip-offs to the campaign, which names and shames pubs and publishes photos of offending queues.
Oisin Rogers, owner of The Devonshire, widely considered London’s busiest pub after opening last year, said members of Gen Z were the main culprits.
Rogers told the Telegraph: “When people became 18 years old and they were under lockdown restrictions, they wouldn’t have been in a proper drinking environment before and wouldn’t have had that culture.”
“I think it’s a lot of [members of] Gen Z who are doing it because of the hangover from Covid with the two-metre rule.”
He added: “I’ve been running pubs for 35 years and can’t remember that ever happening before. This new thing is completely foreign, unnecessary and bizarre.”
Asked what he would do if people queued in a straight line at his establishment, Rogers said he would “come out from behind the bar immediately and tell people to come forward”.
He said if he witnessed a straight-line pub queue, he would walk right past it and head towards the bar.
Rogers said: “I’d go straight to the front of the queue, and if the staff asked me to go to the back, I’d leave the pub.”
“If people had a go at me, I’d tell them that I’m in a pub and I’ve been going all my life and I know how to drink, and this is the right way.”
Designed to be stood around
The Soho landlord said bars are designed to be stood around and are “convivial places of play and fun”.
“Good bar staff know who is next to be served, and proper bar staff would be horrified by this trend,” he said.
He said well-trained staff members see people approaching, catch their eye to acknowledge them and then serve the punter when it is their turn. “Any pub that allows people to do it has no idea what they are doing.”
Tim Martin, owner of the Wetherspoon group, said before the pandemic, “People traditionally spread out along the bar using a variety of signals – waving a fiver or a card, or looking thirsty – to attract the bar staff’s attention.”
Writing in the Wetherspoon News magazine, he added: “The pandemic resulted in formal queuing and, now, anarchy reigns – with customers divided on the best approach.”
