My Cutthroat Shopping Experience In Ocean County

I felt like I was lucky to get out of the store fully intact earlier today. The mob of midday shoppers turned on me, and it wasn't pretty.

I was out before work this morning to run some errands, which included stopping at a busy Ocean County retailer.

I obviously wasn't the only person with this agenda, as the store was busy and the checkout line was long.

I found what I needed and got into line.

This is when things turned ugly.

As I was waiting in the long line, an announcement went over the store's public address system for additional cashiers to report to the checkouts.

A cashier reported to his post and announced, "I can help someone at register 11".

Nobody moved.

He repeated himself.

Everyone kind of looked around, yet still, nobody moved.

So I started to stray out of the line towards the promised land that was register 11.

As I started to mosey towards the open line, a woman in the middle of the line piped up, "hey! There's a line here!"

I looked around, and again saw nobody moving towards the open register, so I responded with a friendly, "why don't we divide up between the registers?"

The woman scowled at me and snapped, "that's not how it works, you obviously don't shop much!" and completed her admonition with a profanity in a foreign language (which I just happened to know).

After an awkward silence and a palpable tension that could be felt through the length of the line, the cashier then amended his earlier call to action, and said, "I can take the next person in line over here".

I stepped back to my previous position in line, while the rest of the shoppers sheepishly avoided eye contact and the grouchy woman fumed and mumbled to herself.

Of course, this is the point where we all think about the things that we could say or do. I thought of all the comebacks that I could have come up with. From withering witticisms to profane proclamations.

But I took the high road.

I decided that this was one of those situations where it was best to adhere to the old adage of, "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all".

Which was also the exact moment that I decided to write about it and publicly shame her instead.

Sometimes, a little politeness and kindness serves better than a snap reaction and rudeness.