I think your life would be much more pleasant if you tried harder to be the kind of person that wouldn’t dream of starting a thread about something like this. I see people getting worked up about stuff like this and just marvel that they have so much spare energy they can waste some on an argument about the “line system.”
It isn’t whether you are right or wrong that matters, it’s that you care at all.
denquixote, you were fine aside from the vehemence, as you put it. Vehemence alone can nullify a perfectly good argument, like a couple of weeks ago when I ragged on a guy for honking at me, basically bellowed at him. About his rudeness. There just doesn’t seem to be a credible way to bellow for politeness. What to do? Hell, I’m in no position to advise you, relax I guess, slow down a tad.
Well, I would have shot the cashier for his rudeness, which would have been counterproductive, as it would have slowed both of us down.
Was the cashier wrong? probably. Was the lady wrong for acting like there were two lines? probably.
Are you making yourself unnecessarily unhappy in a hundred different ways every day? probably.
Stamping around fussing for justice never accomplished anything in this world. Whoever told you like was fair lied. Give yourself the gift of an easygoing outlook. You just won’t believe how easy it is to make the switch, and how much pleasanter life will be.
This is what I think you should do. Let it go, now…now, hear me out! They don’t always get the best and the brightest working there. Plus they are constantly on their feet and busy all day and most people would find the work numbing after a couple of hours. In the words, they screwed up perhaps, but I wouldn’t take it personal. It wasn’t like they looked at you and decided to give you which you may consider to be a shabby treatment.
To give you a real example. I was at the grocery store and when done with the groceries and I had a huge full cart of them, the cashier was very nice and had some friendly little personal comment she said to me. I thought, how nice, she must have remembered me last time because of the way she behaved. I get to my car in the parking lot and realize I forgot to buy something. I got back in immediately, get the item and go the same cashier to buy it. She looks up at me, as she did before and repeats the entire conversation we just had as she has not seen me in a week. My point of this, is that they are pretty much on auto-pilot there. I doubt if you asked them about what they did 10 minutes after you left, it’s doubtful they would even remember it.
In an ideal world, it will be “next in line” gets served first in all circumstances. However, this seems to be primarily the fault of the store for having multiple registers and no line structure. All of the major pharmacy chains seem to have embraced this free-form front-of-store structure for some reason.
Whenever I go in to one of these stores and it’s busy I have this same dilemma of “How many lines are there, exactly?” It’s like the free-for-all when you exit a toll plaza and there are dozens of vehicles accelerating and trying to squeeze down into a few lanes from like twelve. It’s total chaos.