I have never used this blog to tell any of my readers what to do but that's all going to change today. If you see me standing in line in the mall, in the grocery store or at the DMV, do not, I repeat do not under any circumstances, get behind me. No doubt I would enjoy talking to you during the interminable time I am about to waste waiting in line but I wouldn't want to put any of you through that torture. Because no matter how I try to scope out the available cashiers, I will inevitably be standing behind a) someone who needs to search the deep recesses of her over-sized bag for her checkbook, coupons, or exact change, b) someone who picked up the one and only item in the entire store that doesn't have a barcode, c) an unhappy customer who "needs to speak to the manager", d) a mom who has to send her kid back to Aisle 12 for something she forgot or e) all of the above.
I'm not kidding.
Yesterday I was in Costco. I had four items in my arms including a package of aluminum foil that weighed roughly the same as your average toddler. I looked for others who had made the trek to the cavernous superstore for less than a month's worth of supplies and found a line with two customers ahead of me. The elderly couple right in front of me had wine, yogurt and bottled water so they looked like a safe bet and the woman ahead of them was already loading her half-filled cart on the belt.
And that's when the fun started.
She started arguing about returning a box of Keurig coffee cups for a different brand and the cashier had to ever-so-politely inform her that she couldn't do that at the register. They went back and forth about why it wasn't an even exchange and why she couldn't perform the transaction. Oh, but it didn't stop there.
After that discussion was over, the customer waited at the end of the belt until everything was paid for before loading any of it back into the cart. And when she finally paid (with pennies, I think) she deposited every item into the cart as if it were made of glass and/or TNT with a speed rivaling dripping molasses. Meanwhile, I stood there, arms aching from my ten pound package of aluminum foil, watching the two lines on either side of me move through four or five happy customers who had done the smartest thing they had done all day.
They hadn't chosen to get behind me.
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