Last night, I was at the drugstore in my new neighborhood. It has one of those queues that starts at one end of the store with a little “Enter” sign, and if you’re at the opposite end, you’re met with a little wall that tells you you’re not in the right place to join the line. So I entered at the end of the queue lane like a good little girl with my new toothbrush in hand, but just as I got to the line of cash registers, this dude cut in front of the wall, slipped ahead of me, and sidled up to the cashier who should’ve been helping me.

Now, I don’t blame anyone for not going to the end of the queue when there’s no one in line–I get a real kick out of going around unnecessarily long ones, actually–but you’d better be sure your rule-breaking isn’t going to end with you cutting in front of someone like this guy. And of course the cashier didn’t notice what he did or care to do anything about it, so I said, “I know you know what you just did.” But he either didn’t hear me or didn’t care to let on.

A second later, I heard him turn to the racially-similar guy next to him and ask him to “help a brother out” with some money to cover his purchase. The guy next to him said, “Don’t play me like that,” and the ditcher said, “I have kids to feed!” His cashier pulled his item away from him, and he said, “When you have kids, you’ll understand!” And then another lane freed up, and I paid for my toothbrush and assorted other entirely unnecessary trivialities with my loads of cash.