An Opportunist's Plight

Yesterday night, after having an awesome dinner, I was walking down the street back home. I was half decided on having a desert, so just walked out of the restaurant without ordering one. 

While I was still halfway to reach back home, I got this sudden urge to have an ice-cream, an irresistible temptation like kids do get on a frequent basis. While it seemed too big an effort to walk back to one of those fancy restaurant's in another direction, I decided to try my luck with the super-market on the way nearby my place. Trying my luck, not in terms of whether I will get an ice-cream over there or not. Instead the thought of standing in a long queue just to buy a pack of ice-cream was discouraging. 

So, I promised myself to buy it only on one condition: if I was lucky enough of not meeting a long queue at the billing counter.

With this thought in mind, I soon entered the super-market to see a long long queue at both the counters on ground floor. I was perplexed whether I should be trying my luck with the counters on the first floor. I went to ice-cream aisle, picked one from the freezer. I knew that the queue on the first floor is not gonna be any shorter. Just to give it a try, I rushed up to the first floor to find a queue much much much longer than what it was on the ground floor. I thought of going back to the ground floor and putting it back in the freezer.

When I reached there, I wanted to buy it since I had invested so much of my time on this one ice-cream already. I stood for half a minute on deciding whether I should quit and walk back home or I should give it a try, to somehow buy it in lesser than anticipated time ;)

While I was still pondering over this, I saw the lady at the billing counter. I walked up to her and asked if she could get it billed along with her stuff and I will pay the money to her. She looked at me with surprise for a moment but then I asked her again and eventually, she agreed. All the other people right after her in the queue appeared to be in disapproval of my behavior. Each of these people had tonnes of food items in their basket.

I know that this way of breaking in the queue is not an ideal shopper's behaviour but then it was already too late. The clock was about to hit 10 and I wanted to get that ice-cream.

But this was just not the end. The lady who did this favor of buying that ice-cream to me, had a coconut to be billed at another counter (Alas, I did not notice that earlier). Since the bill was not with me, I could not have walked out of the store anyway. I went back to her. The queue at vegetable counter was too long.  She was an ideal shopper and she waited for like 10 minutes to get that billed, I had no other option but to stand there waiting for her. 

By the time, I could actually come out of that place after thanking her, the ice-cream thawed :(