Yes, please, just stand there and dig through your purse!

[Pixilated]

This is pretty minor suckage but it was irritating nonetheless. I went to one of Canada's Big Banks today and there were two tellers behind the counter. The one I attended suddenly had her computer show the infamous Blue Screen of Death -- right in the middle of my transaction, of course. She apologizes (more than once) and tells me I will have to go to Other Teller. There was a young man waiting behind me, so I stepped behind him -- he looked like he was on a lunch break and I was in no hurry.

Teller #2 is dealing with a woman about my age, who appears to be going through a complex and lengthy procedure. Okay, well, these things happen. But finally the teller counts our her money ... and then Mildly Sucky Customer sllooowwwwwly puts it into her wallet. The bills, that is. Then she fishes through her purse and eventually unearths a change purse, into which she slloowwwly pours the change the teller gave her.

By now there are four people waiting in line.

So she's finished, right? She'll step aside and let the next person go, right? Nope. Now she starts an archeological dig through her purse, I'm guessing for her car keys. And she had glanced behind her at least once, so she knew there were other people waiting. But obviously we were irrelevant.

I think the teller finally said something (quietly) to her, because she picked up her purse, moved to an empty spot at the counter, and continued her excavation efforts. Didn't say, "Oh sorry" or anything like that, of course -- no matter how insincere it would've been.

[Food Lady]

I hate that. I grab my stuff as best I can, walk to an empty counter somewhere, and put it away. But some people just move slow. I'm not one of them. I've worked in food too long to be slow.

[RealUnimportant]

Seriously. If you are heading to the counter, get your stuff out while you queue; once your business has been concluded, move to the side & put it away so others can get going.

Don't go telling me how much of a hurry you're in when you're about to spend 5 minutes staring into space & texting rather than making payment! (I actually had that one this week; some people keep their PINs in their phones so I didn't think much of it for the first 30 seconds...)

[Little Retail Rabbit]

I will actually encourage most of my customers to linger for a moment to make sure their purses/wallets are safely away before exiting the building. I do this because at my previous job, you could easily imagine one of the local junkies ripping off a poor old lady (or anyone else) if they were fumbling with their purse and trying to put it away in their handbag etc. But then again, the vast majority of the time, these people are only lingering for an extra 20 seconds or so, and I always say "I'd rather you put your things away in here, than outside" after they apologise for the hold up.

But its a completely different matter if you're just holding everyone up needlessly. Luckily, at my checkout, I can just start serving the next person :P

[Seshat]

Also, there's a big difference between standing at an empty counter or just off to one side (and out of the way), and standing in the way of everything and everyone.

Staying in the building, near the lights-and-people, while getting organised is smart. It's being actively in the way of people that's rude.

[Pixilated]

I will actually encourage most of my customers to linger for a moment to make sure their purses/wallets are safely away before exiting the building. I do this because at my previous job, you could easily imagine one of the local junkies ripping off a poor old lady (or anyone else) if they were fumbling with their purse and trying to put it away in their handbag etc. But then again, the vast majority of the time, these people are only lingering for an extra 20 seconds or so, and I always say "I'd rather you put your things away in here, than outside" after they apologise for the hold up.

But its a completely different matter if you're just holding everyone up needlessly. Luckily, at my checkout, I can just start serving the next person :P

Yeah, I don't think anybody minded that she stayed where she was while she got her money put away and her wallet and change purse back into her purse. It was when she started digging around for whatever (car keys?) and then wouldn't get out of the way, so the next customer in line could be served ... especially after she'd glanced back and seen at least two of us standing there.

[MoonCat]

after she'd glanced back and seen at least two of us standing there.

This is why I think there was some passive-aggressive stuff going on, on her part. Some people are pretty slow in putting away their money...I try to be patient when old folks are in front of me in line doing things like that...but stopping to dig for something else after her transaction was finished, and looking back and seeing other people waiting, and STILL not moving....makes me think it's how she gets her jollies.

[ozcatbug]

My mother and I used to hate my grandma when she did something like this. Our problem was when we were entering the store. So we would go out shopping and grandma would get a trolley and mum and I would share one. Grandma would enter the barrier first, then would stop dead right in front of the barrier to search through her handbag for her list. She would then put her bag onto the childseat in the trolley, then put the catalogue she had picked up on top of her bag with her shopping list. Only then would she walk away from the barrier so that we could get into the store. No matter how loud we would yell at her to move, she wouldn't hear us (although she was deaf, I believe this was more selective deafness as we couldn't be yelling at her could we?) Finally after months of this, after months of telling her to get her shopping list out of her bag before she entered the store, after months of telling her she can't just stop in front of the barrier as many times it isn't just us she is stopping but other customers, she finally seemed to grasp the idea that she might be getting in the way. So from then on she would walk into the store, then stop right in front of the banana's (always in the same place near the entry) then she would do her thing.

Of course by that stage the usual supermarket we went to removed the barriers and made it an open entry. Oh well, seems you can teach an old dog new tricks.

[Merriweather]

My husband sometimes gets a bit annoyed (or when not annoyed, still gives me a tough time) about the fact that when grocery shopping, he will often tell me to move over, etc. to let someone by, as he has noticed them before I do. He attributes this to my being oblivious, and him being so very much more alert.

I attribute it to the fact that I'm rather preoccupied with checking the list I made that has what I have determined we need for food, comparing prices & ingredients, planning meals in my head, and generally trying to do everything necessary to keep the family fed for the best cost - while he's walking down the aisles observing people and paying no attention whatsoever to grocery shopping

[Food Lady]

^ How I wish I had someone to have those kinds of arguments with.

[Pixilated]

My husband sometimes gets a bit annoyed (or when not annoyed, still gives me a tough time) about the fact that when grocery shopping, he will often tell me to move over, etc. to let someone by, as he has noticed them before I do. He attributes this to my being oblivious, and him being so very much more alert.

I attribute it to the fact that I'm rather preoccupied with checking the list I made that has what I have determined we need for food, comparing prices & ingredients, planning meals in my head, and generally trying to do everything necessary to keep the family fed for the best cost - while he's walking down the aisles observing people and paying no attention whatsoever to grocery shopping

I had something like this happen recently: mom and 2 kids are shopping. Mom is further down the aisle picking up items. Closer to me are, stretched across the aisle: buggy at left, older kid in middle, young child at right, with basket, apparently picking things off shelves and putting them in basket ().

Did I mention older kid is texting or playing a handheld game or something ...

I started to slide my buggy between him and the buggy and just said 'Excuse me' clearly ... and with a smile. He looked up, mumbled something and backed up a couple of steps. I think in his case 'oblivious' covers it nicely .

[smfrazier]

I saw an elderly lady do that right outside the exit. There was just a little bit of room for people to barely squeeze by while should stood there looking through her purse, totally oblivious to the human "traffic jam" she was causing.

[raudf]

Some places, it's hard to find a spot that's not in the way to go digging for one's keys. One of the Wally's is getting on my nerves for seeing how chalk full of crud they can get their foyers. I usually go into those, pull to the side and then get my keys from the purse. It never takes long, because I keep the keys in a pocket with the phone.

Unfortunately, this particular Wally makes that impossible to do, so I'm kinda stuck standing in part of the pathway just to quickly get my keys! There was a large pallet of watermelons center, the stuffed toy price machines and electric carts on the left, then more buggies than would fit in their section spewing into the "pathway."

[Pixilated]

Oh yeah, that's a whole different PITA ... stores that jam every available space with displays or shelves or whatnot. Some of them, you're lucky to be able to get a buggy through the aisles. (Not talking about the temporary inconvenience of boxes in the aisles when they're replenishing stock, of course.)

[Willis]

I had an ex-roommate who is like this. He's a neat freak and very deliberate about things. He did the exact same thing once at a fast food drive thru. He already had his food and change but slowly checked his food. Grabbed a couple fries, got a napkin to clean his hands and his mouth. He then slowly organized his bills and took out the dog ears on them. Slowly took his wallet out of his pocket having a little trouble in the process. Slowly puts his bills in and puts his wallet back in this back pocket. He reaches over me to open up the glove compartment to get his coin purse. Slowly puts his change in, looks in his rearview mirror and sees people behind us waiting and then looks over at me and smirks. I finally snapped and told him you know there's other people waiting and why was he acting like a slow ass. He told me cause they'd probably do it to him.

I told him those people hadn't done anything to him. He said it was done to him before so he didn't care. That's the mindset of people like this. If it's done to them and they feel slighted, they take it out on the rest of the world. They either train themselves to be oblivious or come to just not care.