The calm man at the counter

At a shawarma counter in Jeddah late on a Thursday night, there are usually two men working the same queue, and from the guest's side of the glass it is easy to tell them apart.

One is visibly working hard. He calls out orders, reaches across for the garlic, wraps, unwraps, apologises, sweats. He looks like the busiest person on the street.

The other barely seems to move. He takes one order at a time, slices only what the sandwich in front of him needs, folds it the same way every time and hands it over. He talks less. He never looks up at the length of the line.

Stand there long enough and it is the quiet one who is getting through more people, with fewer sandwiches sent back.

It is tempting to read his ease as not caring. It is the opposite. He has done this so many nights that he knows exactly what the job is and what it is not. It is not looking busy. It is a hot, well-wrapped sandwich in the right hands, again. Everything that does not serve that, he has stopped doing.

The frantic man is not lazy. He is spending effort as though effort were the thing being bought. And hurry feeds itself: the faster he goes, the more he fumbles, and every fumble makes him go faster.

When the calm man gets an order wrong, which he sometimes does, he does not try to rescue it with more sauce and another layer of paper. He sets it aside and makes that sandwich again from the bread.

From the queue, that looks like the slowest choice he could make. It is the reason the queue keeps moving.