I believe this queuing was a rather silly thing of the people from Ceausescu?s clique, because whenever he came to visit a place, all the shops were full. My opinion is that the leaders around him were responsible for this, not Ceausescu himself, because it was possible that he had not even known the real situation of the population until up to a certain point. People were afraid, they panicked, and there was not a single person who did not have the freezer loaded with meat; so, the fact that people actually did not have what to eat was not the real issue. They were afraid that they might not find food again, since sometimes, the shops remained without supplies for a very long time. It is true that you could not really find these food products, but nobody was starving. Here, there or somewhere else they found food and people did not complain too much.

Those who had connections did not need to step in front of the queue, the stuff was brought at their homes or they came when the shop was closed for the rest and they took their goods. Another practice was for one person to stay in line and to let others, who had not queued to come and buy when it was his turn. This was the thing with ?connections?. And if somebody tried to buy without queuing, people reacted violently, they swore, shouting that they had been queuing since the crack of dawn, and they could even hit each other.

The most difficult thing was this queuing business. You were with a bone in your leg, when you came from work and you had to queue; one morning, the waiting could start from 3 a.m. until 10-11 when the van arrived, or even later, sometimes around 17:00. It was not pleasant at all. At these queues, lists were written down, one person could go, another one could come instead of him, and there was this practice of saving extra places for some friends. Sometimes, one did not only write his name on the list, but also five or six other names, and then he started selling them (the gypsies usually behaved like this) with as much as 50 lei, rather expensive at the time. The most annoying fact was that those who generally kept queuing were people who had some money, and they were the ones to sell their places or the meat they had bought to those that were less rich. For instance, if the meat was 31 lei at the market, one could buy it with 40 lei at the restaurant, but one need not queue for it.    

People were mixed up when they queued, only the very rich could not be seen. We stayed together, those who had higher situations and those who had none, because the engineers for instance had lower salaries than us, the workers. They were not considered producers of material values. An engineer earned 2000 lei while we earned 5000 lei (when we did extra hours), so we could afford one thing or another. (M. C., 61)

Around the year 1988, the sugar lacked and there were queues. We heard when the sugar ratio was brought, and people went and queued. We always queued for meat! Sometimes we could get them without queuing, but the price was higher. My family and I managed just fine. I had a sister who worked in a shop, so we had everything, meat, instant coffee?(L. A., 42)