I was standing in a queue waiting my turn for the self-checkout - one of those days, you know, where you just want it to be over, you want the pain in your head to go away, the thinking to be done with, you’re done with all of it - when someone jumped the queue and got in front of me. 

This has only happened to me maybe once before - people everywhere tend to understand the concept of queuing and aren’t quite so rude - so I was taken aback and unsure of how to react. The last time this had happened was when I was a kid and I’m pretty sure pulling their trousers down was a viable reply. 

The queue jumper was smaller than me but had an air of nervous dangerous energy about them, which is why I hesitated. Instead I glanced around for an attendant, and of course there wasn’t one. I did notice that it was surprisingly sunny outside - I for sure thought it was going to tip down after I got here, the skies were so gloomy. 

They’ve installed all of these self checkouts even though they never bloody work and most people have trouble with them, so what in theory was a quicker experience always took twice as long. 

I decided to simply confront the queue jumper. 

“Excuse me,” I said “but I was here first,” 

The man turned around, his face a wall of despair. I was taken further aback. He murmured something I didn’t catch, asked him to repeat it, he sighed, then tried again, slightly louder. 

“It was your turn, but you weren’t moving forward so I thought you were thinking of going back for something,” 

Was it my turn? I was at the head of the queue but I didn’t remember a self checkout becoming available. As I was pondering the man’s remarks, he turned away, and then walked over to the self checkout before I could protest. I told myself that I would be next, to let the rude man go away, and I wouldn’t have to wait much longer anyway. 

Across the way, there was a poster suggesting travel as a means of broadening your mind. You never escape advertising anywhere you go. I had actually travelled quite extensively when I was younger. Perhaps my mind had been broadened, but the problem remains that many more people don’t travel or broaden their minds, much like the queue skipper, and so you’re stuck with the same problem of living in a society of close-minded rude people. Only now you’re aware of how rude they are, having experienced the wider world where you had witnessed working societies where such things didn’t happen. 

Stolen story; please report.

I glanced back to see what the queue behind me was like - it was surprisingly long for a Sunday. I looked back again. All singles. That’s the paradox of modern times for you. Everyone’s connected and everyone’s alone. And so many gloomy faces! Not that people needed to walk around with silly grins on but does everyone need to look so miserable - couldn’t they at least attempt to hide their obvious sadness? 

The good thing was that there aren’t any crying babies in places like this - there wouldn’t be though. Some light music might’ve been pleasant though. Anything more than this strange silence. 

This self checkout process really needed another looking at. The waiting is interminable. Maybe that’s why everyone’s so sad - they’re fed up with more standing around waiting for the “convenience” of computers to prove their worth everywhere they go. 

I decided to turn back to the person behind me to see their thoughts on the queue jumper. 

“Did you see that?” I said, nodding in the direction of the man who had moved ahead of me. 

The person behind me had a face that looked like a blighted jigsaw puzzle. I wondered if it was drugs, booze or disease, or a nightmarish combination of all three, that led to her looking like a petri dish of grotesquely coloured matter, but didn’t voice the query. 

If her appearance was a shocker, her voice was from another dimension. After several false starts where she seemed to puncture a deep hole within the phlegm of her chest through some horrendous coughs, she was able to clear her throat enough to tell me that I had been in the wrong. 

“Standing there too long - need to keep things moving, huh,” 

Had I really been distracted for so long? I turned back, realising conversation with this person had been a bad idea all along, and looked at my phone. 

The Google doodle of the day was celebrating, of all things, the inventor of the self checkout machine. I accidentally clicked on the image, trying to get a close up of the face, and it took me to the wiki that gave me the inventor’s life story. Increasing populations, dwindling resources, controls not working, governments around the world taking extreme measures, blah blah blah, then this guy steps in and offers up a solution of sorts. He didn’t solve it but his efforts did fill a hole in the market. 

I had begun thinking of needing the toilet, thinking that a Chinese takeaway for dinner should hit the spot, that there was a movie I had wanted to see that I could watch tonight - I had distracted myself again and only came out of it after spotting the person behind me had also jumped the queue and had moved past me towards the self checkout. 

You would think having been treated so shabbily twice in a row like this that I would be kicking up a fuss. But actually I was thinking that it had been a long day and I didn’t need the thing I had come here for after all. Maybe I’ll come back tomorrow - it’s not like any of this is going away anytime soon. 

As I left the queue and began the walk home, already planning my takeaway order, I thought it was quite amazing that there were even orderly queues for suicide booths.