Accurate Prejudice

I have a system for finding the quickest checkout line at Target. 

It bears a lot of resemblance to my method for finding the quickest security line at the airport.  At the airport, the ideal line to get it is the one with the most English-speaking businessmen traveling alone.  At Target, there are rarely many recognizable businessmen, so my preference is for men over women, English-speaking over non-, young over old, and for heavens' sake, avoid children.  It might not be politically correct, but that doesn't mean I'm not right.

Today, most of the lines broke the English and children guidelines, so I got behind a middle-aged woman who had a very full cart which can sometimes be a bad sign but it was full of several bulky things like a bedding set and large watering can.

However, she was placing on the conveyer belt six (SIX!) bottles of diet cranberry pomegranate juice drink.

"Wow," I thought to myself.  "She seems like a high-maintenance witch."

That sounded ungenerous even inside my own head, so I hastily revised my opinion.  "Well, maybe she has a UTI."  Though buying diet and therefore diluted cranberry juice drink for that would be silly.  Having to revise my opinion to infected and stupid isn't much better than high maintenance.

But that inner dialogue didn't last long.  Because that woman ended up being the most high maintenance witch I've ever had the misfortune to be behind in line. 

First she wanted a price check on a toy lantern, then she had to decide whether she wanted it.  Then she wanted a price check on an opened and manhandled sheer curtain.  Then she decided she didn't want it.  Then she let the cashier scan a few more items, then decided she wanted the opened sheer curtain but didn't want the sheer curtain the cashier had already scanned. But at least she knew how to swipe a credit card, so after that her transaction cleared quickly.

However, she didn't know how to load the bags into her cart, so the cashier handed every single one of my 20-odd items to me over the counter, which I put into my own bags and loaded into my own cart while the woman blocked the exit.  She was frustrated that the Target carts did not have a lower shelf beneath the basket, and querulously asked the clerk twice why the cart lacked it.  Then she asked the clerk what she was supposed to do, since all her purchases wouldn't fit back in the cart.  Since clearly all her items had fit in the cart before she got in line I have no idea what she was thinking. 

The clerk was calmer and much more polite than I would have been, and suggested the woman get a second cart, and also asked if she wanted help out.  After refusing each offer once, the woman finally acquiesced to have someone help her out, and as I left the clerk was trying to flag down another Target employee for assistance.

Turns out my instincts about what six bottles of diet cranberry pomegranate juice drink means were spot-on.