Psycho Granny

Yesterday I was at Waitrose. For my non-UK readers, Waitrose is a posh supermarket that charges about 5% extra than anyone else because their stores look pretty. I can’t see any other difference really, their produce and products are much the same as all the other major supermarkets except for their own gourmet range.

They do however have Pippa Middleton as their ambassador. She got the job recently after they gave Delia the boot who in my view was way better seeing as she actually cooks, as opposed to Pippa who sells balloons and table decorations and doesn’t do much else besides looking good on the slopes of St Moritz with [insert current billionaire boyfriend]. It would seem having a great arse does wonders for your career.

Anyway, I rarely shop there unless I’m in a hurry and only need a few things and yesterday was one of those days. My Mum is visiting us from Australia and has a broken foot so while she was getting her hair cut I dashed off to get some Easter goodies before I had to pick her up.

My issue with Waitrose is that if you’re paying extra you should get the service, so they should have more staff on the tills. This happens about once in every never so I queued up behind two other people who had enormous mountains of shopping on the conveyor belt.

After a few minutes an old-ish lady, probably in her seventies so not that old, queued up behind me making all sorts of grunting noises. She only had about 8 items in her trolley so she should have gone to the basket items aisle, yet she decided to queue behind three other people who all had lots of items.

As time went on she started huffing and puffing showing her anger at being in the queue for so long. She kept bumping her trolley into my back, which I ignored because I thought it was accidental until I turned around and smiled at her at which she responded with by scowling like a feral cat.

So once it was my turn I paid for all my shopping and started to walk off. As I did she shouted out (to my back as I walked away) “thanks, thank you very much for that”.

Instantly she pissed me off and I got it, she was annoyed because she thought I should have let her go first. So I wheeled my trolley back to the aisle said “Excuse me, are you talking to me?” and I think she was a bit surprised that I said anything because clearly I am just an evil witch who picks on old ladies by not letting them queue jump all the time, so she said “you should have let me go first because I have less items than you”.

Now if she were really old and had a walking stick or whatever I probably would have let her go through but she wasn’t. There was nothing wrong with her, she was just a bit old. I was in a hurry and she should have been in the fast queue. That and the fact she was so awful and aggressive and down right rude meant there was no way I’d have let her go first.

So I said “Why should I? I was here first. You shouldn’t even be in this queue with that many items if you’re in a hurry and if you’re that incapable of waiting then get your shopping delivered”.

Both the lady at our till and the next one over stopped what they were doing to watch the drama unfold and from the look on most of the faces around me everyone felt extremely awkward.

So I decided to leave on that note and do you know what she said as I walked off?

“You horrible Australian woman?” ..

That’s right lady, let this be a lesson to you. Never mess with Australians when it comes to queue jumping.

Was I being unreasonable? Have you come across any psycho supermarket behaviour lately?