Limited Shop, Limited Mindset

The supermarket where I work has introduced measures as a result of the current health crisis. There is a limit to how many can be in the store at one time so people aren’t squished together, and we’ve reduced the amount of checkouts that are open because they’re very close together and limited the amount of certain items you can buy in one shop so we can recover from the panic and bulk buying that’s happened.

I’ve been manning the entrance queue, which takes about eight minutes to get in. I know this because I decided to time it when I saw my mum enter the queue and shop for my granny — her mum.

My shift ends and I join up with her to finish with the shop. We join the checkout queue of about nine people, with an off-the-clock colleague in front of us. A couple joins the queue behind us with a basket and only a few items.

Male Customer: *Loudly* “Another f****** queue?! Outside one took half an hour; this one will take what?”

Female Customer: *Loudly* “Probably an hour and a half!”

Mum: *To me* “They pushed in front of me in the queue outside, so it did not take that long for them to get in.”

Male Customer: *Loudly* “[Other Supermarket] doesn’t have this f****** problem; we can just go straight to the checkout!”

Female Customer: *Loudly* “AND they haven’t limited the amount of pasta you can buy!”

Me: *Loudly, to them* “There are eleven people and eleven checkouts; it’ll be a few minutes.”

They ignore me and continue to loudly complain about how awful and stupid our policies are, and how good [Other Supermarket] is. At this point, the queue includes my off-the-clock colleague, my mum, and me, and then this couple. My colleague walks up the queue as she’s called this couple forward several times to use the basket shop and they’ve been too busy complaining to hear her.

Checkout Queue Colleague: “EXCUSE ME! You can go to the basket shop! Please and thank you!”

Male Customer: “F****** rude! [Other Supermarket]—”

Mum: *Yelling* “If [Other Supermarket] is so great, why don’t you just shop there and save us the headache?!”

Female Customer: “Because they’re out of pasta!”

All Of Us: “THAT’S WHY WE’VE LIMITED THE PASTA TO THREE PACKETS PER SHOP!”

The couple scurried to the basket shop.