Maybe it's just me...

[conuly]

but I kinda feel like if you're legitimately the second person on line then you should be at or at least broadly in the vicinity of the belt and not standing around staring vaguely into space some 20 feet away. Indeed, I would go so far as to point out that most people have already begun emptying their cart onto the belt by the time the person in front of them has checked out, thus further reinforcing the image of "A person standing on line - DO NOT CUT" that they of course want to project.

Honestly, my mistake was in replying to her in the first place. She damn well knew she was full of shit, she wasn't going to improve by being told.

Comments

[lilysea]

Given we're still in COVID times,

I would say 2 metres/6ft away from the nearest human in front of you is reasonable.

In not-COVID times, yes, absolutely, load the conveyer belt while waiting,

but in COVID times I think it's fair to cause a slight delay so you can social distance.

[conuly]

There is a difference between causing a slight delay and ramming your cart into the person who is actually next in line because you claim that standing three lanes over is the same thing.

[lilysea]

Yeah, that's not okay :(

I'm sorry that happened to you! :(

and ramming your cart into someone is NEVER okay unless they're trying to mug you or sexually harass you!

[conuly]

I read that last sentence as "It's okay to ram your cart into somebody if you're trying to mug them" and, damn, that's pragmatic but who says that aloud!?

[lilysea]

No, I meant as self defence!

eg Person A tries to mug Person B,

person B rams their cart into Person A to get away...

[conuly]

LOL, yeah, I worked it out afterwards :)

[lilysea]

^_^

Trust me, as someone who has chronic pain

and has had many carts rammed into me by grumpy entitled rich white women

(who would ram you if you delayed them in the supermarket aisles for like a second by existing where they wanted to zoom thru at high speed)

(when I was a uni student, the supermarket that I could catch the bus to was FULL of grumpy entitled rich white women! when they weren't ramming their cart into me, they were being rude to the cashiers)

I would never advocate deliberate cart ramming except in strict self-defense! ^_^

[pauamma]

My local supermarket wobbles for no reason I can figure out between "per checkout queues" and "shared queue for all checkouts". When it's the latter, it's not uncommon for someone to either believe or claim as an excuse that whatever others were for, it couldn't possibly be their turn to check out. But when it's per checkout queue, yes, next customer puts stuff on the belt before previous one is done (with a divider inserted), except for those 2 registers that don't actually have a linear belt, but are U-shaped instead.

[spiffikins]

In the middle of the most COVIDy of COVID times, I remember being in the grocery store, and coming up to the checkouts, and going up to the checkout because there was nobody behind the guy who had finished unloading and was at the register. So I pushed my cart up and stood on the little "6 foot" sticker on the ground and waited till they paid and left and then I moved up the 2 feet and started unloading.

It wasn't until I looked back while unloading my cart, that I saw the people standing in line -starting 6 feet *behind* where I had stood - and realized that I had probably just jumped the entire queue! I felt kind of bad - but at the same time - when we were all putting 6 feet between us in line, it feels *extra* important to make sure you moved forward to the next sticker on the ground - because it's hard enough to figure out that people are in line with 6 feet in between - but when there are TWELVE feet between people and the line goes down the aisle, so you can't see them unless you go around a corner - it's really hard to see that there even is a queue :D

I'm not sure that they noticed - nobody was giving me dirty looks :D But I did start checking more carefully after that!

[marahmarie]

Arggh, your comment actually made me read this comment *both* ways - the way I think they intended it the first time, then the way you saw it/what it literally means the second time. Amazing, reminds me of the optical illusions that go: "If you see this thing in the image first that means you're this kind of person" so I look twice and bam!, there's the thing I didn't see, which means I'm actually some other kind of person. Oh, well.

[marahmarie]

The worst is no stickers so people would socially distance themselves by standing in what I can only describe as a loose sideways-ish zipper formation (Dollar General was the worst and it took them the longest of any stores I regularly go to to finally slap some damn stickers down - like, half of us could've been dead by then). I'd inevitably join the zipper not at the back of the line but by cutting someone without realizing it until that feeling of "eyes boring into my head" would make me ask someone nearby-ish "Did I just cut the line?" and apologize and back up.

[marahmarie]

Ah, Albertson's. Don't miss that at all.

[pauamma]

Different country, so I'll take your word for it.

[marahmarie]

That occurred to me afterward, seeing in other replies you are from...France? At any rate Albertson's was (mine closed years ago up in another county from the one I live in now)/is, from the sound of it, exactly the same.

[pauamma]

*nod* (And yes, France.)