Unfiltered Story #215634

I’m in line at the till of the grocery store. Only two tills are open an there’s a line up at both of them. It’s not a very large store.

I’m second in line. There’s a mother with a small child finishing unloading a full cart of groceries on the belt. The cashier is going as fast as she can and the bagger is keeping up.
Behind them, there’s two young men, each holding a six-pack of beer talking to each other.

Less than minute later, the cart is empty, but the woman leaves the cart in front of the belt, talking to the cashier and her kid, and is in the process of paying when in his rush, the bagger drops a small pack of blueberries that spread on the floor. They quickly pick it up, helped by the cashier of the next till, and cashier continues bagging while the bagger quickly runs back to get her a new one, which are close to the tills.

All this takes less than 15 seconds.

Because of that, the mother seems to forget about her cart, while the bagger rushes along and they chat with the cashier.

The two men are chatting and looked puzzled at the cart left there. I’m tempted to say “You know, those are easy to operate, you can just push it along”, but I refrain.
A few moments later, as it seems evident that the mother is not about to move the cart, they look back and forth at the now empty belt and the cart, then at each other, looking lost, kind of asking themselves “what do we do now? There’s an empty cart blocking the way.” They look at the next till and move to it, ending second in line.

I stretch my arm, take the empty cart, and push it along the till, toward the mother who “flashed on”, realizing that she had left her cart there, says thank you to me, grabs the cart and put her now bagged groceries in.

The belt being empty, I put my few items on, pay and gets out before those two men.

For some, apparently, an empty cart can be such a brain freeze…