Why do we have to be oblivious to where we are when we’re out in public?\u00a0 My wife and I were shopping yesterday afternoon at the grocery store. She mentioned more than once those other customers tended to be oblivious of where they were in the store, standing in the middle of aisles, sometimes looking at their phones for one reason or another, but mostly just standing and staring off into space, or just not being aware of where they were.\u00a0 Or if indeed they might be in the flow of traffic.<\/p>\n
The most egregious instance of this was when we were at the checkout.\u00a0 Walking up to the check stands, I just happened to choose the one where the customer in front of us didn’t have an extremely full cart, she had a plant taking up the majority of hers and seemed to be moving at a rather quick pace.\u00a0 I started to unload our cart and the woman was chatting up the cashier, who was ringing her through rather speedily.\u00a0 It was only when she finished her transaction that things changed.\u00a0 As it so happened, the cashier at the next stand over apparently knew the customer, so they stopped to have a conversation.\u00a0 Which meant the customer was blocking the end of the check stand, where I wanted to be in order to bag OUR groceries.\u00a0 She didn’t seem in any hurry to move, either.<\/p>\n
So there I am, standing with my arms full of my reusable bags, and the cashier reaches over and takes one, helping me to bag the groceries that are piling up now at the end of the check stand.\u00a0 The woman glances at me, then goes back to her conversation.\u00a0 Now I’m getting pissed.\u00a0 I clear my throat….loudly.\u00a0 She ignores me.\u00a0 I really\u00a0really<\/strong> want to tell her to effing move.\u00a0 But I don’t.\u00a0 FINALLY she finishes her conversation, doesn’t apologize for blocking my way and moves on.\u00a0 I glare at her, and start bagging my groceries.<\/p>\n The cashier, having watched the whole scene, commiserated with me.\u00a0\u00a0“Why do people think they have the right to be self-absorbed?”<\/em> was her observation.\u00a0 I couldn’t have agreed more.\u00a0 Sadly, my wife saw a lot of this, but couldn’t hear the gist of the interaction, and I had to explain it to her when we got out to the car.\u00a0 It really put a damper on an otherwise good day.<\/p>\n Boggles the mind, sometimes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Why do we have to be oblivious to where we are when we’re out in public?\u00a0 My wife and I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,43],"tags":[46,45,44,48,47],"class_list":["post-60","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-day-off","tag-common-courtesy","tag-decorum","tag-grocery-shopping","tag-manners","tag-courtesy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/work-and-play.caff-pow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/work-and-play.caff-pow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/work-and-play.caff-pow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/work-and-play.caff-pow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/work-and-play.caff-pow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/work-and-play.caff-pow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66,"href":"https:\/\/work-and-play.caff-pow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions\/66"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/work-and-play.caff-pow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/work-and-play.caff-pow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/work-and-play.caff-pow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}