on saturday i boarded a bus to the meijer superstore to buy groceries and a trash can. to get home, i'd have to board the return bus, which arrives every hour on the weekends. the next bus would stop at the store-front at 5:23pm.
by 5:17pm i stood behind two mothers with children and shopping carts loaded with items of all shapes and sizes. the other lines were similar quagmires. i had switched lines twice by then.
i estimated the odds and sighed. looking past the lines and cashiers, i saw a mini empty starbucks cafe next to a haircutters and a bank branch. turning around, i found no one behind me.
then i had an idea.
at 5:21 i made a mad dash and back to the office supply section: ha! found one. in the interim no one had moved my cart away.
by 5:24, i started unloading my groceries onto the conveyor belt and the bus was gone.
by 5:30 i was drinking a small coffee,
shopping bags next to my cafe table,
doing math on a 1-subject notebook i bought for a dollar,
checking details while waiting for the 6:23 bus.
it was surprisingly productive:
i found out that one of my new ideas doesn't work.
4 comments:
Speaking of lines, I have a rule never to swich the line I'm standing in. It seems to be working. At least I never get the frustration of noticing that the original line would have been faster anyway...
However, I think your solution was the most perfect.
all told, switching lines probably increases the total amount of frustration, which when shopping for necessities is already at high levels.
also, quite a few people looked at me oddly when i did switch lines. the poor fool, they must have thought!
i did like my own solution, too (which is why i chose it, of course). i have a rule that i always carry a pen with me: you never know if math or a reminder message or a phone number needs to be jotted down.
I just hope you didn't buy any icecream. But then again you say you were buying necessities so of course you must have bought some icecream! However, maybe icecream is not as necessary to you as it is to me...
oh, we always have ice cream in the apartment -- either that or chocolate or something else sweet.
it is a necessity, just like coffee and bagels in the mornings, and beer and port wine in the evenings. q:
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