My biggest pet peeve is people who get so damned agitated over an extra 20, 30, 60 seconds in line while someone puts away their change/wallet whatever and situates themselves. It’s not even a minute. It takes longer to make popcorn in the microwave. If your time is so precious that a minute is going to ruin your entire day, I recommend getting an earlier start.
Why bother even doing that? Just check your receipts against your online check register when you get home. Download your register and statements from your bank account. Who keeps handwritten, or even data entry type registers anymore? 
In the top three of my pet peeves is those women who insist upon carting toddler-sized gym bags into the locker room and plunking it on the bench for 45 minutes while they use it (the bench, not the bag) as their own personal vanity top.
You get 2 or 3 people doing that in an eensy weensy locker room, no one can sit down.
You guys are the best! Dingbats!
In the defense of the check-writers who wait to fill everything out? It’s usually safe to assume that most stores today can automatically print out everything on your check. All you need to do is sign. So, you get up to the front and find that they don’t have one of these dealies. Real quick-like, now you have to write in everything as fast as you can so that the person behind you doesn’t shit his pants in those thirty seconds. Loosen up your schedules, man!
In retrospect, it’s perhaps less about the loss of an actual increment of time than it is about the fact that this person has shown a complete lack of awareness/regard for other folks around them. You’re right, 30 seconds isn’t a big deal. In fact, it’s no problem at all if (for example) they’ve got so many groceries in their cart that it takes 30 seconds longer to scan all their stuff than it does to scan yours. But 30 seconds wasted for no better reason than that someone couldn’t grasp the concept of parallel processing (fill out your check while, not after, cashier scans groceries), or was too proud to bag their own groceries while the cashier scanned, or was too busy watching the scanned prices (instead of browsing their receipt afterwards) is, well, irritating.
Agree. In the case where I attempted to shame/ridicule the woman, she had sent her grandkid back to pick up an item that the cashier wouldn’t accept a coupon for (since she hadn’t purchased it). Her attitude was one of leisure. Then, it was only after everything was settled and bagging was complete (she and her other grandkid did no bagging) that she began rummaging around in her purse for her checkbook.
I am definitely irritated by customers behind me that have no patience and want to hurry me along. You know, those people who are citizens of the United States of Get the Fuck Out of My Way. Hey, buddy, I’m a citizen of the United States of Let Me Put My Change in My Pocket and Grab My Purchases and Wait Your Fucking Turn.
And I vote.
Since when is 89 not on a tight schedule? Look, the Grim Reaper is breathing down your neck - do you want to spend those moments playing Bingo and watching Diagnosis Murder, or do you want to spend them standing on your feet fucking around with your wallet?
I’ve actually scanned the receipt afterwards and, get this, when I found a mistake and pointed it out to the cashier as she was handling the next customer, she asked me to wait for her to finish. She then proceeded to start checking out the next customer! When I told her I was waiting for her to correct my total, she said. “Oh, I thought you were just going to forget about it.”
Forget about it? What do you think I’m still fucking standing here for? So that I admire the aesthetic vision of loveliness that is you as you slovenly go about your job duties, careful not to snap off your glittery, muralistic Dreamworks-inspired Lee nails?
Oh, yeah. Irritates me no end. I will often ask the offender, “Excuse me, but would you mind if we shared this bench, please?” and she will usually apologize and move the stuff. I am irritated by lots of inconsiderate people at the gym, at least partly because I don’t even want to be there in the first place.
People who park their car in the parcel pickup lane of the grocery store with a nearly empty parking lot just in front of them, then leave their car to do their shopping. Seriously?
Although I got a special thrill at my grocery store a few months ago watching an elderly employee pushing carts around the parking lot who then fussed at a guy in a BMW for parking in the lane, saying it was only for if you had a cart full of groceries in front of the store or for dropping off people. The guy argued with the employee for a few minutes and then said “FINE I’ll just go to another market G@ddammit!”. With wife and kids sitting in there with him. Yeah that’ll teach the store a lesson!
Not everyone is capable of parallel processing. Not everyone is capable of bagging their own groceries. There is more than a whiff of ableism in expecting that everyone should do so and that failure to do so is some sort of disrespectful act.
As for browsing the receipt afterwards, I’m giving that a big huge absolutely no, not a chance. Here’s why: if my transaction is over when I spot an error, then I have to shlep with my stuff to go stand in line at customer services, then they have to look at my receipt and I have to argue with them that no, that cheese was part of the 2/$4 sale, not $3.39, and then wait while the customer service person, or some minion, goes and fetches the cheese signage or looks at the cheese signage or goes and gets a circular and then goes to look at the cheese display, which is inevitably in the furthest corner of the store away from customer service, and yada yada.
The end result is that in saving 30 seconds of someone else’s time by not paying attention and catching the error during the transaction because I was bagging my stuff or whatever, I’m now losing several minutes of my time, while my cold foods start falling into dangerously warm temperatures and my patience is deeply tested by the fact that the people in customer service at a supermarket tend to be the ones who weren’t quite up to handling the intellectual or multitasking rigors of being a cashier.
Again, I posit, leave 30 seconds earlier, like I did, so that the choices of the person(s) in front of me in the line aren’t that big a deal in my day.
It’s not every one that has to parallel process: it’s you, plus the cashier, working together to process things in parallel. Cashier scans groceries, you fill out your check. From your own perspective it’s a single process (check-writing), but from the perspective of the impatient prick in line behind you, it’s a team effort between you and the cashier.
The arthritic senior citizen holding a cane gets a pass on bagging, sure, but I’m not talking about them - I’m talking about people that are, by all outward appearances, able-bodied. I don’t believe all of the people I’ve seen not bagging their own groceries are in some way deficient.
This happens, yes, but how often? Once a year, i.e. once out of every 52 trips? How about if everybody does this? The line is 3-deep, and at a minute apiece for the cashier to bag each customer’s groceries, you (and everyone else) now have to stand in line an extra three minutes before reaching the cashier. See tragedy of the commons: you alone reap the benefit of scrutinizing the scans in real-time, while the rest of us bear the bulk of the cost. Thanks.
If the situation is so marginal that an extra 2-3 minutes is significantly increasing the risk of food-borne illness for you, then I’d strongly recommend shopping at a grocery store closer to your home. The life you save could be your own.
See upthread: this is less about the thirty seconds than it is about a disregard for your fellow shoppers.
So instead you make the cashier find someone to check the cheese signage and make everyone else wait for five minutes. Good plan.
Where do you guys live that you’re even allowed to bag your own groceries? (I know they do in Europe, but I assumed that was a US answer because over there either you bag them or they sit there.) If I did that I think the bagging kids would probably get fired by somebody for letting a customer do their work.
At the store my wife and I shop at, there are a few baggers who are expected to serve multiple cashier lanes. If they’re not available (cuz they’re bagging on another lane), AND if customer opts not to bag their own groceries - then the cashier bags the groceries after they’re done scanning.
The cashiers consistently express gratitude (“thanks for bagging!”) when I bag my own; I expect that this is part of their training, which is to say that bagging your own - while not explicitly necessary - is not unexpected by management.
My fiance’ works with an older woman… easily late 70s, who at least once every two weeks spends an hour on the phone with her bank regarding some unfathomable (to her) piece of common modern banking.
This week “I want to just deposit a check into the ATM and then get cash back. I don’t want to use a debit card. I don’t want it to ‘ding’ my credit.”
As my parents slipped into their dotage they became those kinds of dithering bumblers who would hold people up in grocery store lines. Sometimes after a trip shopping one of them would call me, either angry or hurt, to tell me some rude thing a person in line said to them. It was tough on them because sometimes shopping was the highlight of their day and they had looked forward to their little outing.
What could I do about it for them? Not much, but I came up with a solution. I could give other old people I encountered daily a little patience as they continued to insist on participating in a world which was rapidly becoming confusing to them. You know, treat them like I was hoping others were doing for my parents.
A lot of those people aren’t doing it on purpose to irritate those behind them who are in a hurry. Their minds work more slowly and are sometimes cluttered with so many memories and daily trivia that they are easily confused.
I might add, that pressuring them to hurry sometimes only makes them feel more confused.
This method of self-soothing when you’re feelig rushed and hampered only works, of course, if you have consideration for humanity in general and aren’t too self-centered.
If that is the case, give 'em a shove and mutter, “Die already! I got important stuff to do.” 
It’s not a single process, though, if my writing my check means that I’m not watching the prices as things are rung through.
Well first of all, I heartily reject your notion that not able-bodied = deficient. Secondly, I remind you that you have no way of knowing by looking at someone what disabilities they may or may not have. By all appearances, I’m able-bodied, but in fact, I’m not. The majority of physical disabilities are invisible disabilities. You can’t know, and it’s not your business.
3 out of my last 8 trips, actually. I shop more often than once a week, and in more than one store.
Why not put that blame where it belongs – on stores that cannot be bothered to ensure that their inventory systems are updated properly, or that their shelf tags are put in the right places or police their shelves so that the lazy stockers don’t put non-sale items where sale items go? If errors weren’t being made by the store, then everyone could happily ignore the scanning process.
And it’s equally a manner of disregard to get all huffy or make rude comments – which happens – because the person who beat you into a line doesn’t move as quickly as you think that they ought to. Tethered Kite said it better than I could but you know, get a little bit of consideration that not everyone can do everything as quickly as you can, or in the manner that you can or think that they should.
I write checks on occassion, it makes me laugh to see people behind me getting ready to get all uptight when they see a checkbook. As if CC’s are so much faster, :rolleyes: swipe, wait, press yes, wait, press credit or debit, wait, pin code, wait, sign, wait, Uhoh FAIL. Startover, repeat. FAIL uhoh your magnetic strip is boinked, got another card? :rolleyes:
But what really kills them is when I take an extra 5 seconds to write in my transaction too.
What is it that makes check haters so squirrely and twitchy? Fear of paper? fear of pens? fear of numbers written out in print? :dubious: