If you start here where does it stop with correcting the rest of the human race for their perceived lack of awareness? If you do choose to confront such individuals in a trivial situation such as this, are you also prepared to accept it when people are vocally annoyed by some minor inconsiderate foible of your own?
If someone in front of you in the express aisle had more than the maximum items.. what would you do?
99% of the people can dish it out but not take it …
There is a difference between a confused person who got in the wrong line and a person who is obviously being a dick and counting on not being called on it. A simple, “excuse me, this is the express line” is not unreasonable. What is unreasonable are people who think that they are some how special and can go around inconveniencing other people with never being called on it.
Its an honest mistake. I’ve often gone to the supermarket to buy 3 things but ended up with 15 because they were on sale so i bought 4-5.
What irritates me is people trying to write a check and they have to call the manager.
The OP states that the person has 25+ items in a 12 items or fewer lane.
They do here too. Bigger guns, in fact. So what?
Whiney little bitch. Real men don’t drink acidophilus milk.
Back in my cashiering days we could call somebody over with a large order if we weren’t busy. If we were busy, though, and especially if we already had a line, we had management’s blessing to politely call over to that person that this was the express lane and point to the sign. Nine times out of ten they’d apologize and change lanes. Other times they’d throw a fit right then and there and management would move them to the front of the line just to get rid of them.
Most of the supermarkets around my way have replaced their express lanes with self-scans – i.e., the “if you’re in such a hurry do it yourself” method 
A diplomatic reminder is appropriate. “Sir/Ma’am, are you aware that this is the express lane, with a 12-item limit?”
Maybe they’re not aware, and you’ve just mercifully given them an out: “oh I’m sorry, I was not aware. I’ll be leaving now.”
Maybe they’re fully aware, but they’ll still use your out as a way to back down without losing face.
And maybe they’re fully aware, and they’re totally an asshole, and now you’ve required them to admit their assholery, hopefully causing them some small measure of public discomfort. In the best case, the cashier will be made aware of the situation and can enforce policy.
The same tactic is appropriate for people who cut in line. If no one ever calls them on it, then they have no reason to stop doing it (because their innate sense of fairness toward others seems to be broken).
I guess it’s human nature to concoct artificial hardship in one’s life in the absence of any actual problems.
What about what happened to me recently? I went into a check out lane (not an express lane).
There were two people in front of me. A woman with a trolley with about 25 items, and another woman with just a bottle of milk. Good, I thought, this shouldn’t take long. Then her husband turned up with a trolley holding enough food to feed the whole town. “excuse me” he said,“my wife is saving my place in the queue”.
“no way” I said,“if you had been in the queue when I turned up, I would taken another check out”. So, after a bit of argy bargy the manager arrived and sorted him out. Some people have no idea how to behave.
You guys are lucky. We don’t have lines or a maximum number items in the stores here. Shoppers use the cart to clear a path to the register, and Ms. DrumBum and our empregada Gizela are a formidable team. :eek:
Just the other day I stepped into an express lane, with 4 items in my hands, and the woman in front of me, next in line, had about 30 items on the conveyer belt. She took one look at me and started piling her items back into her cart, apologizing to everyone who could hear. By the time she extracted herself from the mess I’m not sure any time was saved by anyone involved.
There have been times when the 10 item or less line was empty and the unoccupied cashier has waved me in when s/he saw me cruising for checkout aisle. Not when I had a basket loaded to the top, but when I clearly had way more than 10 items. Then while I’m being checked out, a line has formed behind me of people with two and three items, everyone throwing me dirty looks.
I would ignore it.
I say something extremely rude and inappropriately nasty. But I say it quietly so that only the offender and a few others can hear me.
I might grumble out loud about it if it’s really egregious (i.e. a totally full, heaped-up cart in the 15 items or less line), but if it’s only 20-30 items in the 15 items or less line, I’d probably just ignore it.
Enough other strange stuff goes on that I may not know why that person’s in the line ahead of me. Once I had a full cart, and the regular lines were full and had 2-3 people lined up. I rolled my cart up and was trying to figure out which line was the fastest, and one of the store’s assistant managers waved me down and put me in the express line. I imagine the person behind me might have been pissed, but I did it because I was instructed to do so by the store management, not because I’m some entitled asshole who thinks I’m special.
I picked option #2 but all I do is politely remind them that this is the express lane. In every case they have sheepishly moved.
If they’re already unloading when I walk up, I give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it was an empty line and the cashier waved them over. If they’re in line behind someone else, I just say “This is the express line.” in a friendly manner. The one time I did it, the person actually apologized and said he didn’t see the sign, and moved to another line. He was way over the limit though - the cart was overflowing.
I was thinking the Sesame Street pinball “12” song. I even have a toddler so I could be semi-subtle with it.
Really though, life’s too short to care.
Very often the express line is empty and a checker will wave me over with a basketfull of groceries. Once we start checking the line starts backing up and I find myself embarrassed. Never been a big deal but it is a bit awkward when that happens.