Nevermind.
Last October at a convention in Chicago, I actually had a guy in front of me just flat out stop in a revolving door to check his phone. He was super surprised when I continued pushing the door and the bar whacked him from behind. It was fairly epic. I think I’ll remember that fondly forever.
What is the everloving deal with people who lay on their carts like that??
Just got back from a cruise. They have a big food court/ buffet called the Lido. That effing thing needs signs. Don’t stop in the middle of the walkway to peer at the rolls. Kindly step over to the counter & peruse the rolls. If you come across a pal in said Lido, Don’t stop in the middle of the walkway to hug and shriek in joy , kindly step to the side??? And if I am carrying a full plate of food and you stop suddenly, well it’s on you. Literally. Don’t expect an apology, in fact get in line & get me more lasagna, will you, moron?
Bad backs. Leaning heavily over the cart is one of the most evident signs of lower back pain and stenosis, exacerbated by standing so long in huge warehouses. It was of the first things my orthopedist asked me if I did when narrowing in on my back problem. I’ve seen other people on the board here mention it, too. Not that it’s acceptable to do in the middle of the aisle.
Reminds me of an incident at the store: Two women exiting the place, both with full shopping carts, block the entire entrance to the ramp leading out of the store. They apparently haven’t seen each other in about five years, and stand there talking for about five minutes, catching up on everything, while I’m watching them and thinking “If there’s a fire here, it’s going to get nasty.” Finally, I walk past the four people trying to get out of the store via the ramp, go up to one of the women and say “Can you please stop blocking the ramp and let the other people get out?”
In NJ, you are supposed to exit by the front door of the bus, so the driver can make sure you didn’t get on for a one zone ride and go through three zones. Yet there are people who insist on going out the back door, which is supposedly only used for emergencies.
I hate the people who crowd the door to get on at a busy stop or even the terminal before the exiting people can get off the bus.
Uhhh, we do? We wait IN line or we queue. And we tut and slightly shake our heads at people who don’t. Though we do have our fair share of obliviots.
We do walk past on whichever side suits us at the time though, so if you come over here, please don’t pick people up if they’re walking towards you, that’s not polite, just walk round them and slightly frown if necessary.
I think the most egregious example of self-entitled obliviousness I’ve come across was driving; the street where I used to live had a little side road, on which everyone parked as it was inner city, which was just wide enough for one car to drive down the middle if both sides were full of parked cars, which they usually were. There was a teeny turning area at the end, in which it was possible, with care, for 2 cars to squeak past each other and turn if someone parked under the ‘turning area, no parking’ sign, which happened an annoying amount. I was just heading out one morning, with another car in front of me (we’d just squeezed round each other turning at the end, as some eejit had parked there), when a third car turned in to the street. So… single lane dead-end road, with 2 cars coming towards him, the only space for two cars to pass was just behind him, the obvious thing to do is… gesture at the front car to back up, right?
Yep.
After a few minutes of head shaking and gesturing back at him, the lady in front got out her car and walked over to talk to him. Discussion happened. She then walked back to me and told me ‘He said he’s not moving, he wants us to both back up’. I pointed out that there wasn’t space for three cars in the turning space, with one car already parked there. She confirmed she’d already told him that, he said he didn’t care. He continued to sit there for a full 15 minutes, glaring at both of us for refusing to break the laws of physics.
I turned my car off after 5. He finally backed down and backed up the 10 meters required when I pulled a book out and started reading…
So you’re saying that 4 people just stood there silently for minutes on end without asking the women to please move aside?
4 New Jersey people?
Her stories should only be taken for entertainment value rather than any reflection of reality. The only thing this lacked from her usual was a witty comment that resulted in the entire store breaking out in applause.
Yeah, but that’s like an Armageddon-sized plot hole right there.
Actually I think this is analogous to driving, where a following car should maintain proper clearance so they can handle a sudden stop without rear-ending the vehicle in front.
Once in Lowe’s I was walking down the main corridor looking for an item and stopped to peer down an aisle. This nearly resulted in my being impaled by long sections of pipe in the shopping cart of the chucklehead who was following me way too closely. Both he and his equally dimwitted wife clucked in disapproval as if it was my fault.
The behavior described by the OP is common in China. Frustratingly so. Even today my wife – who is Chinese – stopped suddenly outside the Costco exit to put on our daughter’s coat. I had to gently admonish her, as always, to not stop in the flow of traffic and to get the hell out of the way.
It’s not just escalators and door exits. They freaking do it on the road and expressway. I’m not sure where the idea of this comes from culturally. It has to be something more than selfishness, doesn’t it?
Today Diane Jennings, my favorite Youtuber, posted a new video featuring her alter ego Editor Diane complaining about all the things that annoy here. One of them is people who stop at the top or the bottom of the escalator. Here it is, queued up to the right spot.
The background is that she’d promised to post an Editor Diane video when she reached 100,000 subscribers. Despite (or perhaps because of) being surly and mean, Editor Diane is very popular with her followers.
[Checking] Yes, this is the Pit.
Cops who badge people like that are assholes. Like a thousand times worse that someone who is a bit oblivious and standing in someone’s way.
Fuck that cop and his asinine display of chimp dominance behavior. He’s the kind of person who becomes a cop because he likes to push people around.
I only skimmed the thread so forgive me if somebody already said this and I missed it, but the spouse and I have a theory about the people who stop at the ends of stairs/escalators, just inside/outside doorways, or similar spots. We call it the “decision point theory” (his term). These people get to a spot where they have to make a decision about what to do (go forward, go left, go right, etc.) and it just freezes up their mental processors so they stop.
It’s sort of related to the way a lot of people can’t walk/shop/whatever in any kind of effective manner while talking on a cell phone. Overloaded processor.
I suspect you may be right. I’m quite SURE you are right about the old couple who stopped in the parking lot driveway, because I literally can’t see any other reason TO stop in the entry to a parking lot. I could almost hear their thoughts, “My goodness, Edgar, so many cars! So many stores! So many parking spots! Why did we come here, again?”
The family in the OP, though, I got the impression that Dad wanted to address the troops about shopping opportunities and where they were going, and just chose a remarkably dumb place to DO it.
Bolding mine. Was this intentional since we are talking about lines, in which case, sweet! Or did you just want to see if we are paying attention?
To the OP, this shit is indeed very annoying. I wonder if it’s related to the doorway effect? I also wonder if the knowing about the doorway effect has given me confirmation bias about all the times I forget what I was doing when I walk through doorways. I know I use it as an excuse much of the time. 
It’s very common in Thailand. The worst example that comes to mind is the time someone parked behind me making it impossible for me to move my car, despite that parking places without that drawback were readily available. (I’ll guess he thought I was an employee of the nearby car dealer and assumed I wouldn’t want to move my car until the 5pm quitting time.)
That driver had locked his car, and gone in someone else’s car to run an errand in another city! Fortunately, someone had his phone number and he came back in 20 minutes or so to let me out. I’m not sure if they completed their errand, or turned around just for me.
The big difference with OP, however, is that in Thailand the offender will always be friendly and apologetic. The very rude response shown in OP is much worse than the initial carelessness. And, BTW, the example above and others occurred many years ago. Here in upcountry Thailand the recent improvement in some behavior has been quite striking.
This is perhaps one of too much politeness resulting in problems. I recently saw the Monet exhibit in Denver. Sure, there were people doing random walks as they swung their heavy bags into everybody around them, but that’s not why I’m telling the story.
It was a crowded exhibit, and as is appropriate, people walked through it slowly looking at all the paintings. To be polite (maybe?), people would stand away from the paintings towards the middle of the room. The problem with this behavior is it meant the only walking path through the room was between the people looking at the paintings and the paintings. If people had just all taken a step or two towards what they were looking at, then there would have been plenty of space to walk through the middle of the rooms and not directly in front of the art.
My fave, posted many times on these boards, is the clueless people who use the indoor running track at our gym for a casual stroll side by side–bonus points if they go the wrong direction.
It’s a two lane track with clear signage indicating walkers and slow runners go on the inside, faster runners on the outside, and which direction to run in each day of the week. In colder months I’m running there every day.
Occasionally a pair of middle aged women will go there to have a friendly chat while walking side by side blocking the whole track.
I give them a lap or two with a polite “excuse me” to see if they are paying attention. After a few nice laps like that, if they continue blocking the way, I will squeeze right on by with no cares about how much of my sweat gets slathered on them.
Fortunately this really is a rare event. Most people get it after the first “excuse me” and pay attention to who is coming up behind them and politely move to the side.
This particular trap (left hand turn into a parking lot behind someone who stops) is a fairly new addition to my own defensive driving toolkit.
The problem is that there are so many valid reasons why someone might stop in the entrance.
Examples: There could be a car pulling out of a spot that they want, and they are waiting for it (still rude to block entrance).
There could be car coming from the side that is not visible to you.
There could be an obstruction in the pavement that makes them go extra cautiously.
They could have seen squirrel run in front of them.
Their car could have stalled.
There is a shopping center near my house that has multiple issues with their entrance: it has bushes on the side of the entrance that obscure the view beyond; it has a lane of traffic running across just past the bush line; and the main road surface outside the lot was paved a couple of inches too low, leaving a 3 inch cliff going into the lot. Any one of those three is enough to cause a left turner to slow down dramatically or stop, often leaving the guy behind them hanging.
Don’t get me wrong: your guy probably stopped because he was clueless (Occam’s Razor), but until I recognized how The Trap works, I never thought to watch out for it. Nowadays I am wary of being the blocker as well as the blockee.