Transcription
One of the things that fascinates me is things that people hate and they don't quite know why. And people really, really hate airport security. But that business of going through the security line, people find disproportionately distressing. And to be honest, if you ask them why, they don't really know. They'll come up with, "Well, it's humiliating. I don't you know blah blah blah blah."
Now interestingly, when I last went to Heathrow, six of you, when you reach the front of the queue, six of you sit stand there in parallel against the table [music] and in your own time, you divest yourself of metallic objects into a tray, put your laptop into the tray. Then when you're ready, you pick up your tray and put it on the the conveyor belt and it goes through the x-ray and you walk through the [music] machine that goes beep. What I immediately noticed is that is much less stressful than the previous system.
There is a an instinctive human thing which is I don't want to look like a fool in front of a queuing crowd of people. So when I arrived at the front of the queue when it was the standard system where it was one at a time in order, I had the fear that I would mess up, forget my belt, forget my watch, look like an idiot in front of other people and that was making me anxious. But I didn't really know the reason for the anxiety.
What's interesting is that when you change the system so that a a mistake [music] on my part doesn't actually delay people behind me, the anxiety disappears. Now interestingly, I knew a little bit about this anxiety because I've worked a little bit with the fast food industry and there's a known moment of what's called menu stress which is you're in front of the queue at KFC and you're blithering or dithering over your choice and you can feel kind of the laser eyes of the six people behind you going, "Get a move on, you tosser. I want to order my food."