Passengers unite to put entitled family in their place after trying to skip a long queue

It's not uncommon to encounter entitled people in public, but how others react can make all the difference. In a Reddit post, u/external_affect2391 described how a family tried to cut the line at passport control in Iceland—only to be swiftly put in their place by other travelers. "I think this is the first time in a long while I saw a group of people act entitled, were yelled at by other people in line and they actually listened." 

"Was waiting in the passport line in Iceland where a lot of flights land very early in the morning, and have a short layover (think around 1hour) before connecting to a new flight," they explained. Among them were others who had just gotten off their flight, which had landed at 6:30 a.m., and were waiting at passport control. Their connecting flight was scheduled to depart at 7:20 a.m. "The non-EU side of the passport line had nearly 200+ people waiting in queue and it was going about as fast as it could... so slow and that's just the reality of it," they wrote. Most people were waiting patiently in the queue except for one family. They then shared what exactly transpired. "Back of the line, one man goes nearly to the front and pesters this half-awake 20-year-old kid about cutting in front of him because 'his flight is leaving soon,'" they said.

The 20-year-old agreed and that man waved to the back and shouted, "He said we can go in front of him." Immediately, six other people who seemed to be his family came to the front. However, this didn't go well with the other people waiting in the queue. "Cue uproar from the whole line, 'What do you think you're doing?' 'Go to the back!' 'Go back to where you were, you aren't special!'" The man who had called these six people from the back tried to reason by saying they had a connecting flight leaving at 7:30 am. People in the queue responded that they all had to catch the same flight. "It was gratifying in real-time to see the man look around and see 200+ people in the exact same situation as him and he was not special. He finally sheepishly waved his family to go back to his old spot at the back of the line," they expressed. 

They shared they were able to get through the passport control and catch their flight to New York around 7:10 am and it was all because of their EU partner. The partner apparently got to the gate faster and begged the airplane staff to hold the gate and wait for them. "I was one of the last ones on the flight. I was in the front third of the passport line while the line cutters were way behind me, so I don't know if they made their flight or not, but at least it was some morning entertainment," they concluded.

People in the comments shared similar experiences. u/baloney1056 commented, "My husband and I were in Germany about 15 years ago, first time there right off the plane. We were waiting in a line of about 15 people to buy train tickets when an old German guy walked up to the front of the line. Everyone started yelling at him in German and I honestly thought they were going to attack him. Those people really know how to stand up for themselves."

u/sarahlizzy wrote, "Had this at the escalator up from the Piccadilly Libe at Kings Cross underground station once. It was a long queue to get on the escalator. Some woman barges in front of me. There's a queue. 'I have a train to catch!' 'What the hell do you think the rest of us are doing here at this railway station?'" u/ISTBruce shared, "And why do people think they only need the person they are cutting in front of's permission and not every single person between the cut and where they were? I have never understood this." u/foreign-king7613 said, "Pure ego."