New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie found himself in big trouble a few weeks back. Allegedly, some people on his staff thought it would be really clever to exact revenge on a non-supportive colleague by closing down some of his nearby toll lanes and creating traffic havoc for his constituents.
A vehicular version of musical chairs.
It wasn’t nice, of course, but you have to give them points for being clever. Nothing makes your heart sink like seeing a sign that says “Two lanes closed ahead.”
Or trying to check out in a bottleneck store. You know what I mean. Thousands of feet of attractively arranged display areas, loads of wonderful things you would like to buy, but the whole process funnels down to one or two harried cashiers, and one of them, poor thing, has just been forced to call in a price check on a spool of off-white quilting thread. (Is it $1.09 or $1.29?)
If the line is too long in those situations, I just replace my items and trudge out to the car, resigned to living out the rest of my days without whatever wonders I had in hand.
The New Jersey drivers didn’t have that option, I guess, unless they could figure out a Plan B way to get home. Some bottlenecks can be circumvented with a little creativity. Take my kitchen, for example. Our house boasts a decent amount of square footage. There are bedrooms for overnight visitors and a multitude of couch cushions for those who want to sit a spell. When my family gets together, we can all physically fit in my kitchen, but come lunchtime, only one person can make a sandwich at a time.
Even when it’s just Harold and me fuddling around the house, we knock elbows in the kitchen, because for all of the self-proclaimed work area, there is only one three-foot section where any actual work can be done. It’s like a sandwich sweet spot. It’s across from the sink, two steps from the refrigerator, within easy reach of the silverware drawer, perfect in every way except that only one person can use it at a time. If Harold is making a sandwich, I can get creative and repeatedly do the bypass loop around the center island, but it adds about 27 steps to the sandwich process, and while I am trying to add healthy steps to my daily routine, I would much rather those steps be spent meandering through a sunlit park or perusing bookstore shelves.
I could just wait until Harold was finished making his sandwich, of course (Plan C), but waiting is not my strong suit. I usually just give up and grab a yogurt from the fridge.
When people ponder dream house blueprints, they should give a lot of thought to these traffic patterns. Feng shui, two-way, whatever way suits your family, but test it with a small to-scale walkthrough. Put your little Lego people in place and see how they would function in a regular day. Kitchens need multi-lane work areas, hallways need two-shoulder passing width. And here’s another thing: you can have a master bathroom the size of a New York apartment, but keep in mind that there are still going to be only a few critical square feet where all of the actual use will take place.
Maybe that’s where the New Jersey folks got the idea. Or maybe it was exiting a movie theater or trying to make their way out of a church parking lot. Whatever. Waiting is waiting, and we’re not good at it. It’s a bottleneck pain in the neck.
