The Next In Line

Have you ever had this happen to you........

Last week, I'm standing in line at the grocery store. I only have five or six items, but as luck would have it, there are no express lines open. So, I find the shortest available line and take my place. There are two people in front me, both of which have a cartload of groceries. Before long, another shopper takes lines up behind me. Realizing that the lines are beginning to back up, the manager tells one of the nearby workers to to open up another check-out line. By this time, the person directly in front of me is loading his grocery on the conveyor belt.

After a few minutes, a young cashier turns on the light for her work station and says, "I can help the next person in line."

Before she even completed the sentence, the guy behind immediately bolts towards the new check-out line. The cashier and I give each other a "WTF" look as the guy starts loading his stuff onto belt. I really felt like walking over, tossing his groceries onto the floor and saying, "Hey asshole, what part of 'next in line' didn't you understand?"

But realizing that it was now my turn in my own line, I just let it go and essentially averted a Walmart moment at the Giant.

Now, just yesterday, I stopped off at a local Walgreens to pick up a few things. There are two lines open. In one line, a guy is having a pissing contest with the cashier over the price off an electronic cigarette. So, I opt to take the other line where a woman is filtering through a stack of coupons. After she finally gets her coupons sorted out, she asks the cashier for a raincheck on a particular item. The cashier begins the process of writing the raincheck. You would have thought she was writing a novel from the time it was taking her. Of course, between the cigarette guy and the coupon/raincheck lady, the line is starting to grow.

The cigarette guy finally finishes up and the cashier says to me, "Sir, I can help you over here."

So, I begin to walk over to her line. But then, to my bewilderment, the guy who was behind me, rushes past me like Emmitt Smith. I fought the instinctive urge to clothesline the jerk. Since I really didn't want to wind up in this week's Crime Beat section of the MD Gazette, I lowered my right forearm. I say to the guy, "Hey bud, I think she was calling me over."

He says, "Oh really, were you next?"

Now, the guy has been staring at the back of my head for the past ten minutes, but somehow he still couldn't comprehend that the I was in front of him. The guy's question was so stupid, that I didn't even reply to it. Now, the ironic part is I could sense that the guy was thinking that I was the asshole. I could tell this because he was mumbling to himself like Slingblade. Of course, this freaked me out a little as I envisioned the guy smacking me in the back of the head with a lawnmower blade. I couldn't get out of the place fast enough!

I'm sure this won't be the last time these things will happen. Our society seems to a severe learning disability when it comes to distinguishing between the next in line and the last in line....

kw