Customers queue good-naturedly at a branch of the Trustee Savings Bank in 1956.
Queuing, along with warm beer and afternoon tea, was once a quintessential British trait. But it would seem we are no longer prepared to wait in line.
Two minutes is the longest many British consumers are prepared to queue, down from five minutes just six years ago.
Two-thirds of us have walked away from buying something in a shop because we were so fed up with queuing, the survey also found.
Queuing patiently was once considered a typically British trait, fostered during the era of rationing. It was deemed a sign of civility that consumers were prepared to wait a long time, sometimes only to discover the shop had run out of butter or meat.
British buses, with only one place to hop on, are also believed to be a key reason why we have been more prepared to queue than our European cousins – where the predominant form of public transport was the tram, with multiple doors, which discouraged the single, disciplined line.
However, the survey undertaken for Barclays and Barclaycard discovered that two fifths of British refuse to queue for longer than two minutes and 51 percent of shoppers refuse to even enter a store if they spy a queue.
This is in contrast to a similar survey back in 2004 which discovered half of shoppers refused to queue for more than five minutes in a high street shop.
The internet, which allows shoppers to buy most goods, with just a click of the mouse, is one of the reason why people's patience appears to be so thin. While ever longer working hours has also meant British employees have lost the art of queuing.
Some shops, the study found, made the queues appear shorter, by shifting the position of the till.
Stuart Neal, head of contactless payment at Barclaycard, said: “Our research shows that consumers are much less willing to stand in line compared to six years ago and it would seem that as the Internet has become more popular among shoppers, impatience with queuing has increased.
"Used to buying without delay, customers are even abandoning purchases rather than wait their turn. Shoppers are also less likely to queue for long if the item they are buying is of low value, and as a result food and drink retailers are having to find innovative ways to deliver good customer service.”
排队、热啤和下午茶曾一度是英国人的典型特点。而如今，英国人似乎不再愿意排队了。
英国人购物时能忍耐的最长排队时间已从六年前的五分钟降至目前的两分钟。
此外，调查发现，由于不愿排队，三分之二的英国人在购物时宁愿不买走人。
耐心排队一度被视为英国人的典型特点，这一习惯是在（战争）配给年代培养起来的。排队被视为一种礼仪的象征，人们在买东西时愿意排很长的队，有时候排到时却发现他们想要的黄油或猪肉已经卖完了。
英国的巴士只有一个上车门，这也被认为是英国人比欧洲其它国家的人更有耐心排队的一个重要原因。欧洲其他国家的主要交通工具是有轨电车，这种车带有多个门，所以人们就无需规矩地排成一队等待上车。
然而，这项为巴克莱银行和巴克莱信用卡发行公司开展的调查发现，五分之二的英国人排队超过两分钟就不耐烦了，51%的人在购物时如果看见商店里排着长队干脆就不进去了。
这一调查结果与2004年的一项类似调查形成对比，当年的调查发现半数受访者在繁华商业区购物时排队最多可以忍耐五分钟。
互联网也是人们失去耐心的原因之一，人们只需轻点鼠标即可在网上买到大多数商品。此外，工作时间变长也使得英国人失去了排队的艺术。
调查发现，一些商店试图通过变动收银台的位置以让等待结帐的队伍看起来短一些。
巴克莱信用卡发行公司的非接触式支付业务主管斯图亚特•尼尔说：“我们的调查显示，相比于六年前，消费者排队等候的耐心减少了很多，随着网上购物越来越受欢迎，人们也变得越来越不耐烦。”
“习惯了无等候的购物方式，人们甚至宁愿不买也不愿意排队。如果只买一些小东西，人们就更不愿意去排队了，因此食品和饮料零售商必须想出新的办法来为顾客提供优质服务。”
fed up with: 对……感到厌烦
rationing: the policy of limiting the amount of food, fuel, etc. that people are allowed to have when there is not enough for everyone to have as much as they want 定量配给政策；配给制
high street: 大街（城镇的主要街道），繁华的商业大街
till: 交款处