My grandmother in Singapore will not let anyone in the family cut in a queue, ever, under any circumstances, even when the queue in question is for something as low-stakes as a single free sample at the wet market. "There is no free sample worth becoming an animal over," she told my cousin once, physically pulling him back into the correct spot after he tried to slide in near the front. "You wait. Everyone waits. That is the whole agreement we have with each other." I thought this was just a personal quirk until I watched an entire market square self-organize around her one Saturday….. a line for fishballs forming with almost eerie precision the second she arrived, nobody saying a word about it, just falling into place like she was some kind of unofficial queue marshal. "Why does everyone listen to you specifically," I asked. "Because I have been coming here for forty years and I have never once broken a queue," she said. "People remember who plays fair. Also I will say something if you don't." I tested this theory during a huge line for bak kwa the week of Chinese New Year, an absolute chaos of elbows and trolleys, and watched a young guy try to cut near the front. My grandmother, four people back, said nothing more than his exact spot in line out loud, calmly, like reading a receipt: "You were behind the auntie in the yellow, not here." He went back. Nobody argued with her. Nobody ever does.