For a long time I’ve wondered how to handle this traffic situation:
Say you have a major street, Main Street. And cutting across it is a smaller street, Small Street. Where Small Street meets Main Street, Small Street has a stop sign for both directions. Main Street traffic, however, goes right through (so I guess, it’s like a 2-way stop).
If you come to a stop sign on Small Street, and someone else comes to the sign on the other side of Main on Small Street, do you treat it with the same rules as a 4-way stop? That is, do you have to wait for the other person to go first, if they arrived first? What if you have an opportunity to go but, due to traffic flow, they can’t? Do you still have to wait?
Also, extending this to the 4-way stop scenario — if you are stopped at a 4-way, and it’s not technically your right of way, but you can go, and the person who arrived before you has to stop to wait for pedestrians, can you go ahead and go?
Hm.
TurtleHead 
I think in that situation (ie, when you’re facing each other), either at a 4-way stop or a 2-way stop, then the only way you can interfere with each other at all is if one of you is making a left turn. And left turn loses right of way to going straight so…if you see him signalling left, you can go. If you’re going left, then wait. Otherwise, you don’t have to care what he’s doing. Doesn’t matter who got there first.
The “who got there first” rule only applies at 4-way stops when the drivers are perpendicular to each other, and might be confused as to who gets to go.