The counter is the queue

A man at a service counter in Riyadh is trying to move his phone line into his wife's name, and every person he speaks to explains, kindly, why that is not up to them.

The first says the system will not allow it from this branch. The second says the rule was set years ago and has worked well enough since. The third says she would help, but her supervisor needs to sign, and the supervisor is not in today. The fourth suggests he call the hotline, which will tell him to visit a branch.

Nobody is rude. That is the strange part. Each answer is reasonable on its own, and each person believes, quite sincerely, that the problem lives somewhere above them: in the software, in management, in a policy nobody in the room wrote.

This is what a place sounds like as it starts to go quiet inside. Not shouting, not scandal. A polite chorus of not me. Not my desk, not my rule, not worth raising, and anyway, nobody will notice.

But the system the man is stuck in is not a machine in a back room. It is the four people he spoke to, and everyone like them, each stepping aside so the problem can pass through to the next desk. The rule survives because every one of them lets it survive. The supervisor's absence is an answer only because everyone has agreed to treat it as one.

People who say the circumstances will not let them are usually describing themselves. The line of customers behind the man is not something that happened to the counter.

The counter is the queue.