buffet line policy

We were having this company function and lunch was buffet style. Somehow, the buffet queue evolved into something like the diagram below, with people taking food from one side and queuing up on the other side.
I whispered to my colleague, asking how come the queue become like that, and I sort of suggested having 2 lines would be more efficient. But being a small fry, I didn't really raise it up to the buffet crowd.
Then came a medium-big shot, a not very well-liked figure. He loudly criticized the queue as inefficient, then set out to take food from the other side of the buffet table. Efficient, but he disrupted the order. People at the end of the queue (ie, that guy) ended up getting the food faster.

So that buffet table gave me some food for thought. This is a classical top-down press for change, which the rank is the convincing by itself. Sometimes it is not that the bottom aren't using their brain, but bottom-up always seems to experience more resistance, just like the pull from gravity. Also, when the top presses for change and they are the first to benefit from it, how would the people below receive it? Well you can say he was spearheading the change. In this case, if the guy suggested the 2 queue system and let the people in the middle go first, would it be better-received?

Anyway the food sucks, so it didn't matter.