Me, too. I voted “not dickish,” but now I see how it can skew decisions by those behind us. I won’t be doing this anymore. Ignorance fought!
think about it for a second. I’m behind you in line, you have nothing or maybe one thing in your hands. I picked the line because maybe it was short, or the people already in line didn’t have much to check out. I’m thinking “ok, this will go quickly.” All of a sudden your wife ambles up next to you with an overflowing cart. now I know I’m going to be standing there forever. And I’m there to pick something up on my lunch break and need to get back to work. or those blazin’ wings from BWW I ate last night are down there telling me they need to leave soon.
as far as I’m concerned, that’s a cut in line. total dick move. not dick-ish, total dick move. you get in line with the stuff you’re there to buy. you don’t “hold a spot” only to fuck with the people behind you later.
Your sentences don’t start with subjects, do they?
Why must they, anyway?
Not dickish. The burden on lines is the people getting checked out. These people are only going to do that in one line. It would only be a pleasant surprise for whichever line they abandon.
There are frequent mentions of overloaded carts in this thread. To be clear, there were no carts involved. It was a man and a woman, each with an armload of items.
No.
mmm
The dickishness is directly proportional to the number of items being purchased.
To my chagrin, my wife is a “let me go get just one more item while you wait in line” shopper.
If abandoning a line creates a pleasant surprise, then the line that is cut into is receiving a proportional unpleasant surprise.
Delivering an unpleasant surprise to an unsuspecting stranger is a jerk move.
That’s exactly it.
I voted “Don’t give a rat’s ass” … I’ve found that I spend more time waiting in line at the checkout than actual shopping … someone wants to try to game the system is fine by me … good luck … more annoying is picking what looks like the shortest line and it turns out to be the longest line … but then I’m annoyed at myself …
I’m looking forward to RFid technology … one just loads up the cart and simply walks out … all the products send out their UPC code which is registered and the bill is in the next day’s mail service … the store could lay off a half dozen minimum wage workers … or robotics, punch in your grocery list from home and thirty minutes later the self-driving van shows up at your door … another dozen workers laid off … perhaps someday the technology will exist to just produce our food at home, some kind of “plot” where we can bury small high-tech gadgets that erupt and become food in a few months (water not included) … 3D printers that use methane, water and ammonia and we can just print our food out … vats of photoplankton that can be pressed into little green biscuits or something …
The future looks tasty …
Yep, this is why it’s dickish.
How dickish it is, is a function of how much extra stuff is brought over from the other line, and how much time that adds to the wait of everybody behind them. A few items, hardly dickish at all. A full shopping cart, majorly dickish.
I think this has happened to me maybe once in the past few decades, so it’s not something I’m gonna get worked up about.
Dick move because I always shop alone so there’s no way I could possibly take advantage of it.
The whole point of ordering on apps and then picking up is to skip the line. The stores heavily promote this feature and there is absolutely nothing wrong with using it. If you’re so upset, then you use the order ahead app.
My local supermarket got rid of self-checkout registers, which is the ultimate dick move.
If someone gets in line with groceries, and they don’t get in the back, they are cutting. It’s plain and simple. It doesn’t matter if someone else is holding a spot. This isn’t the third grade. The rule is: You get in line with the stuff you want to buy. People who cut lines at Disney world get thrown the fuck out of the park, and rightfully so.
Waiting in a supermarket line is a zero sum game. If one saves time by gaming the system, they are costing other people time. It is selfish and inconsiderate. I’m surprised that so many people condone this.
Which is the dick move, the self checkout registers, or getting rid of them?
I hate those things. I’ve tried about 4 times now, and every time, it’ll start telling me to do something I’m already doing, then start alarming, and a clerk has to come over and fix it. I see people who use them, but I don’t get it.
I use the same blow-up doll that I use for… carpool lanes.
Exactly. Or, at least, rant at the stores for the way that they prioritize orders if you think it’s wrong, not at customers simply using a service that the store offers.
There’s nothing wrong with holding a place in line IMO. Two people, each has a right to stand in line like any other person in a store. Many ‘it’s a dick move’ answers treat the couple together as equal to any single customer entitled to do one thing, but they aren’t one customer.
The ‘dick move’ side has a better argument on the secondary issue having to do with the cart: if people have to get out of the way of a shifting cart, people sometimes choose lines based on how much is in the carts ahead of them, etc. But OP seemed to come back and throw that out with ‘no cart’.
As a stripped down example if there are multiple ‘express’ lines (as in one big super market we often go to) and one member of a couple stands in each and consolidates on the faster one, nothing wrong with that IMO. Each a person in their own right. 
Although as somebody else said, it also suggests how inefficient it is to have multiple lines when a store is busy rather than one line feeding all the registers (as the Trader Joe’s we go to does, at least on weekends when it is mobbed).
So I said no, but maybe ‘depends’ would have been better.
Removing them. I’m pretty efficient at using these and vastly prefer them.
But nobody is disputing their right to stand in line. The question is what that place entitles you to do, and I’m with the consensus that it entitles you to pay for the groceries that you have with you when you get in line, with a little flexibility if your friend goes to grab an item that you forgot.
If I were in front of someone who tried to pull this stunt in an egregious way, and there were 10 people behind, I would offer to pay for the groceries of those 10 people behind, and deduct the cost from my entertainment budget.
Yes, it’s a dick move. People choose what line to stand in based on how quickly they think they’ll get out of the store, and how many people are in line/how many groceries they have is vital information for making that choice.
Standing in line with fewer grocieries than you’re actually planning on paying for means that you’re messing with the decision-making process of every person who chooses a line after you. It’s inherently selfish behavior. If everyone did it, the check-out process would fall apart and need to be changed.