What to Say When Someone Cuts in Line in Front of You

—Photo-Illustration by TIME (Source Image: Antenna/Getty Images) Wait a second.

You’ve been standing in line for 20 minutes, famished and desperate to order one of the viral bagels that keep selling out—or for six hours outside a concert venue, determined to claim a spot at the barricade to see your favorite band.

And then someone strolls up and slips in line ahead of you.

Apparently, the rest of you have been standing around for the ambiance.

How much of a sin are line-cutters committing? “You are ripping the fabric of society apart,” says Nick Leighton, an etiquette expert and co-host of the podcast Were You Raised by Wolves? Queue-jumpers have to live with that, he adds.

“But worse, we have to live with you.” Here’s exactly how to handle this maddening situation—including when and how best to speak up.

When to speak up about someone cutting in line If a stranger jumping ahead of you feels strangely personal, Richard C.

Larson, a professor emeritus of data, systems, and society at MIT who has studied queuing, understands why.

“We only have a finite number of minutes of life on Earth,” he says.

The cutter’s implied message: “A minute of my life is worth more than a minute of yours.” Before you decide whether to confront the offender, think about what speaking up would accomplish.

Are you trying to reclaim your turn or get revenge? Sometimes, the impulse is “to sort of let them know you think they’re a jerk,” says Ryan Martin, a professor of psychology and dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, known online as the Anger Professor because he studies strong emotions.

Martin would speak up to help someone recognize “that what they did wasn’t OK and that I wanted them to go to the back of the line,” he says.

But he’d also consider: “What is going to allow me to have the kind of night I want to have?” If you spend the concert replaying a confrontation instead of singing your happy heart out, you’ve lost more than your place in line.

Leighton's gut check for situations like these is to ask yourself: Is this the hill you want to die on? “That’s always a good etiquette question,” he says.