Unfiltered Story #289774

Several years ago, before self-checkout was a thing, I finished up my grocery shopping and head to the checkout. When I get near the 15 items or less lane I see that no one is in line, but I think I have too many items so I stop and start counting my cart. An employee who is standing right there keeping an eye on the lines waves me in and says “go right ahead, no one is in line”. Of course, as soon as I start unloading my items onto the belt, 3 people appear from thin air and join the line behind me, each holding only 1-2 items. I try to get things through as quickly as possible, but I had 28 items total, so it does take a little bit of time. As I’m leaving, the cashier says “you know, this is the express line” in a tone of voice that makes it clear she was annoyed. I really want to defend myself and say someone else told me to use the lane, but feel that anything I say will just make things worse so I just take my receipt and leave.

Even years later, my social anxiety insists that I should’ve somehow found a way to not mildly inconvenience all the people behind me, but at the same time ignoring the employee would’ve let an empty lane go to waste with an idle cashier. Avoiding this particular type of awkward situation turns into one of the many reasons I now almost exclusively use self-checkout, with its judgement-free computer systems that don’t care if I accidently have 16 items, let alone 30.