The Worst People Alive Are Always In Line Directly In Front Of Me

A meditation on self-checkout, coupon panic, and the person buying lottery tickets while society collapses.

The grocery store is where civilization goes to remove its bra in public.

Everyone walks in pretending they are a normal person with a list. Spinach. Eggs. Greek yogurt. Toilet paper. One little treat because we are still human and the world is on fire.

Then you get inside and within five minutes, some woman is blocking the entire bread aisle while reading the back of a sourdough loaf like it contains the terms of her divorce. A child is face-down near the frozen waffles, screaming into the linoleum because his mother said no to cereal shaped like tiny frosted construction debris.

And then there’s me.

I am not here to browse. I am here to quickly remove myself from the retail battlefield with eggs, milk, and whatever bagged salad looks least like it has already accepted death.

But the universe sees me coming.

The universe places the worst person alive directly in front of me.

Every time.

I don’t mean “worst” in the true moral sense. I understand there are dictators, hedge fund bros, and people who leave fake eyelashes in public sinks. I’m talking about a more intimate evil. A local evil. The person who waits until every item has been scanned, bagged, and judged by the ancestors before pulling out their payment method.

You know this person.

They had the entire length of the line to prepare. They stood there while the cashier dragged 1,293 items across the scanner. They watched the total appear on the screen. They heard the little beep chorus of American commerce. And then, once the cashier says the amount, they act confused.

As if the concept of money was introduced during this transaction and now we must all stand here while they process it in real time.

This is where the purse opens.

Not a normal purse. A leather-bottomed cave system containing receipts from places that closed two decades ago, one cough drop wearing lint like a fur coat, loose pennies, a phone charger for a device they no longer have, and a checkbook.

A CHECKBOOK.

Nothing turns a grocery line into a historical reenactment faster than a checkbook. Suddenly we are all churning butter. Someone is about to die of dysentery. A man near the gum display starts considering whether he has the upper body strength to build a cabin.

And the person writing the check is never in a hurry. That’s part of the ritual. They write with the slow dignity of someone signing the Louisiana Purchase. They ask the cashier what the date is. They ask how to spell the store name. The store name is above their head in letters large enough to guide ships.

Meanwhile, I’m standing behind them holding milk and a rotisserie chicken that is sweating through the bag like it knows we made a mistake.

Self-checkout was supposed to save us from this.

That is a lie.

Self-checkout was marketed as freedom. Scan your own items. Skip the line. Become the captain of your tiny grocery ship. And for a while, I believed. I strutted up to that machine like a woman with agency. A woman who knows how to scan a barcode.

Then the machine accused me of stealing.

Unexpected item in bagging area.

Excuse me? That unexpected item is spinach, you ungrateful little airport kiosk. I scanned it. You beeped. We move on.

Self-checkout machines have the moral suspicion of a schoolteacher. They assume guilt from the start. You place one item half an inch outside the designated plastic square and suddenly a red light starts flashing over your head like you’ve been caught smuggling diamonds through customs in a bag of shredded mozzarella.

Then comes the employee.

Not mad. Worse. Tired.

They have seen humanity at its lowest. They have watched grown adults lose fights with produce codes. They have had to explain hundreds of times that yes, you do have to press “pay now” before the paying can begin. Their soul left the building sometime around the third person who tried to scan a bakery muffin by rubbing it against the screen.

But the true villain of self-checkout is the person who rolls up with a cart so full it needs its own town. They scan one item. Pause. Bag it. Rearrange the bag. Scan another item. Stare at the screen. Remove the item. Rescan the item. Turn to their spouse with dead-eyed confusion.

This is when I start fantasizing about a grocery store bouncer.

Not security. A bouncer.

Someone in a black T-shirt with a clipboard who decides whether you have the emotional stamina for self-checkout.

One basket? Come on in.

Twelve yogurts, three coupons, a price dispute, and the trembling hand of someone about to search for exact change? Back to the cashier line, Linda. Society has suffered enough.

And then there are coupons. Coupons are where the social contract dies.

I admire a deal and love a bargain. I want money off my sad little groceries like everyone else. But there is a specific breed of coupon person who acts like the register is a courtroom and they are defending the last innocent man in America.

The coupon will not scan.

The coupon expired last year.

The coupon is for a different brand, different size, different flavor, different timeline, and a different grocery store in a different dimension.

None of this matters.

The coupon person will argue with the cashier. They ask for a manager. They search their app. They reload the app. They sigh. They make a face at the cashier like the cashier has joined Big Yogurt. They hold up one tiny paper rectangle and somehow bring a whole checkout lane to its knees.

And I’m behind them, aging.

My salad has wilted and my frozen vegetables are now soup.

Then comes the lottery ticket guy.

Every grocery store has one. He appears at the customer service counter with the grave focus of a man managing a shipping port. He is never buying one ticket. Don’t be adorable. He is buying 53 tickets, from 12 different games, with instructions that sound like code from a Cold War submarine.

He wants three of the green ones, two Powerballs, one Mega, four scratchers from the middle row, none of the holiday ones, and something called Cash Explosion, which sounds less like a lottery game and more like a bank robbery gone wrong.

This man will spend more time selecting lottery tickets than I spent choosing my last health insurance plan.

And I get it. Hope is expensive. We all want the magic little rectangle that says our lives can change without us having to network, meditate, or become one of those people who wakes up and drinks lemon water while journaling about abundance.

But sir.

My ice cream is melting.

There is a moment in every checkout line where I become a worse person than the person in front of me. That’s the ugly truth. I start out patient. I tell myself everyone deserves grace. I remind myself that life is hard and maybe this woman with the checkbook is doing her best.

Then ten minutes pass and I become a courtroom sketch of myself.

I start judging groceries. I become intimate with strangers’ choices against my will. I know who is buying cat food, wine, laxatives, birthday candles, and a single suspicious cucumber. I know who is pretending the family-size peanut butter cups are “for the house.” I know who came in for milk and left with ice cream sandwiches.

And yes, I am also buying nonsense. That is not the point. The point is I am buying my nonsense with urgency.

This is my only civic virtue.

I move fast.

I tap my card like an experienced professional. I bag with military purpose. I do not wait until the total appears to begin wondering whether capitalism applies to me. I do not ask the cashier if the machine took off the 75 cents. I accept the loss. I become poor with dignity.

Maybe that’s all adulthood is.

Standing in line, surrounded by people making private disasters public, trying not to become the person everyone else hates.

Because we all have our moment. One day, I will be the woman holding up the line. My card will decline because fraud protection thinks buying chicken and mascara in the same transaction is suspicious. My coupon will fail. My app will log me out. My tote bag will rip open and send lemons rolling under the candy display like yellow little escapees.

And someone behind me will stare holes into my back, holding a leaking rotisserie chicken, convinced I am the worst person alive.

Fair.

Still.

If you buy lottery tickets during rush hour at the grocery store, I hope your scratcher reveals a tiny message that says MOVE.