Tuesday 21 October 2008

Another Supermarket Gripe

Credit crunch notwithstanding, the queues were long at Marks this morning.

I stood in queue next to a closed checkout thinking, "Perhaps someone would open this checkout soon."

Someone did: Manhar, an older Asian gentleman who is always polite and appears to take great pride in all that he does, whether in taking payment or stacking shelves. I've seen him coming to work (with his document case) and he is always smartly dressed. If there are two queues of about the same number of shoppers, I'll choose Manhar's.

I saw him approaching the empty checkout and headed towards it. Before I got there an older lady asked, "Is this opening?"

I said "yes" and indicated that she went ahead of me as she only had a few items in her hands. A young man was carrying her bag.

But just as she got to the checkout (like two old lady steps away), another woman, older than me (she was wearing bifocals) and younger than my first older lady barged in, virtually pushing her aside.

I heard her mutter, "... waiting for a long time."

The older lady didn't have a choice, but stepped back to let her through.

It wasn't like, "I'm sorry I've waited some time and I need to be somewhere else, could I go ahead of you?" Or simply, "I've been waiting some time, is it OK to go ahead of you?"

No, she just barged in, as if she was entitled to do so. There wasn't even a "thank you". I am sure if she had asked nicely both of us -- any reasonable person -- would say, "Sure, go ahead."

All through the checkout process: she had slippers with a barcode that does not read and so the numbers had to be punched in, and she wanted cashback, etc, etc. (in the end I would have finished earlier had I stuck to my original queue, but that is not the point) this woman had a face as black as thunder, as if she had been offended by someone.

When she walked away, lady in front of me said something to Manhar who replied discreetly, "We are all different, but best not to talk about it here."

Not exactly 'selfish behaviour', but annoyingly rude.