Pet Peeve

One of my pet peeve was having a family splitting up and queueing at the different queues at the supermarket. And all would give up their queues once whoever reaches the cashier first. This, to me, is very inconsiderate (although admittedly, I had been guilty of such behaviours too). Anyway, here's what happened when, by chance, I broke up such a mother-daughter pair yesterday.

I was at the supermarket and after getting what I wanted, I made my way to the cashier. There were 2 counters and there were 2 queues. It so happened that left queue ended with a trolley. A lady had her hand on the trolley and she stood next to a younger girl who was queuing in the right queue. And they were both chatting happily. Behind this girl, there were a few others and it looked like after the girl, there was only one queue.

Being a little confused, I walked up and asked the lady if there was one or two queues. She looked at me and answered, a bit rudely, that there were two. Once she did that, the empty-handed young girl quickly walked away from the right queue and pretended like she had never queued in the first place. This, apparently, was greeted with huge smiles from those queueing behind the girl and the distinction between the right and the left queues became clear.

I looked a little closer at the queues and realised that on the left queue, there were two persons in front of the mother and each person has a full basket-load of groceries. And for the right queue, there were four persons but their baskets were only half full. It was then that I realised they were a mother-daughter pair and that the daughter had been in the other queue hoping that it would go faster. Anyway, I didn’t bother, I simply joined in the right queue.

Sighs...

(for the record, I managed to pay for my purchases before the mother did... heh).