I was in the queue at Costco, lining up with all the other people who were ready to pay. I had a trolley with five or six things in it, and the guy in front was trolleyless, just carrying the things he was buying. He had four quite bulky tubs of powder, the sort of powder that people who want to be body builders buy. The ones that can be quite tricky to carry due to being shaped like vats. He was struggling, but against the odds he managed to hold them all. The guy in front put his things on the conveyor belt and stepped to the pedestrian side.
(For the uninitiated, the tills at Costco are unlike any supermarket tills. When you reach the conveyor belt, you put the light things on to the conveyor belt, but you leave the heavy things in your trolley. You then push your trolley to one side of the conveyor belt, behind the Costco employee so they can scan the larger items in the trolley, and you walk around the other side of the conveyor belt in front of the employee.)
As the guy in front put his items on the conveyor, he exhaled in an exaggerated manly way, then walked around the pedestrian side. As the conveyor moved a gap developed, so I put my lighter things on it, then pushed my trolley around the trolley section.
When it came to his turn to be served, the Costco lady politely asked if my trolley was his. He laughed and said, “No, one thing I’ve learned is when you come to Costco, don’t use a trolley!” The Costco lady looked at him and smiled in a way which seemed to mean “I’m acknowledging that I’ve heard you speak, but I’ve no interest in hearing any more about what you’re inevitably going to tell me.” The man continued…
“Yeah, so if you take a trolley into Costco, you end up buying too much. So I never take a trolley because It’ll end up costing hundreds!”
The Costco lady did a no-eye smile at him which I took to mean, “I heard that too but, in the politest possible terms, I genuinely don’t care.” The man obviously continued…
“I just get what I can carry, and it saves me so much money. I haven’t used a trolley in years!” he announced. Unsure of why the man was providing such detailed reasoning about something she had shown no interest in, the Costco employee looked at him with a look of “Ooh, you are a brave little soldier! Do you want a medal? Eh? A little medal for the brave little shopping soldier who doesn’t use trolleys?” Then she said something like “£72.40 please.”
The man was about to pay but then, with sudden urgency, asked “Oh, do you have any of those big shopping bags?” and he mimed a large rectangle with his hands. The Costco lady said, “No, we sold out a few weeks ago.” The man gave an exaggerated sigh and started to complain, saying “So I’ve got to carry these big tubs to my car now?”
It was at this point that I annoyed a Man in Costco by butting in and saying to him, “One thing I’ve learned is if you want to move things in Costco, you’re best using a trolley. You can get them from the entrance and you can just walk round the shop with it and put things in it. It just helps to carry stuff about.”
The man looked at me with such incredulity, it was as though were were in the 11th Century and I’d just suggested the Earth was a sphere. He couldn’t take it in. He just couldn’t process it mentally. Processing it might mean acceptance, and if he accepted that it might mean admitting that everything he knew up until this point was wrong, and being wrong about anything is just something some people find hard to accept. So he looked at me, but said nothing, for ages. I half imagined he would just suddenly shout, “SHUT UP! JUST…. SHUP UP!!” and stomp off like a primary school child, but he didn’t.
The Costco lady didn’t make eye contact with either of us, but she did finally smile as she started to scan my shopping.