The queue that starts at dawn

Once a month, an optician in Kafr el-Sheikh runs a free eye test morning. There are only so many slots, so the rule is the one everyone knows. Numbers are handed out at the door, and when they are gone, they are gone.

By six there is a line. Retired men who sleep badly and live nearby. A young man who wants a second opinion on frames he has already bought. A woman who has taken the day off and would have been fine either way.

The girl who cannot read the board at school is not in the line. Her mother starts work early and could not get there before eight. By eight the numbers had run out.

Nobody designed this to be unfair. It is simply the default for handing out anything scarce, and it is the default because it asks nothing of the person running it. No judgement, no sorting, no awkward conversations. The line decides.

But the line is a poor judge. It does not measure who needs the slot most, or who would be helped most by it, or who could not get help anywhere else. It measures who had a free morning and lived close to the door.

The optician could ask the schools to send the children who are struggling. He could keep half the slots for people who have never had a test. He could take names during the month and sort them by need. Each of these would do more good than a stack of paper numbers.

First come, first served feels fair because we grew up with it. It feels like nobody is being favoured. Someone always is: the person with the most time to spare.

The girl at the back of the classroom is paying for that habit, and she never even reached the door.