Cutting In

The local dollar store is notoriously slow. They tend to have only one checkout open, and every trip one finds oneself behind someone needing the manager, which delays the line for several minutes at a time. When you shop there, you just need to have the adequate time and patience to wait it out. That's why things are only a dollar!

When I went there earlier today, they were out of carts and baskets. So I had to carry my numerous heavy items throughout the store and then hold them during my wait in the checkout line. As I'm there waiting along with the other patrons, a young woman who was in her late teens comes behind me with a Coke and chocolate bar. She asks me if she can cut in line ahead of me, because she's on her way to class and she only has three items (I didn't happen to see item #3).

Normally I would say yes. However, due to the heavy load I was balancing, not to mention her young age and excuse, I pondered whether my not letting her cut ahead would constitute a chillul Hashem. And I said to myself (or maybe it was my yetzer hara, chasve shalom) that this girl could allow herself adequate time to get to class and procure her chocolate bar. More to the point, she could choose to either buy her items elsewhere, where service was suitably expeditious, or suffer through the line like the rest of us. To be honest, given my obvious juggling act at the time of her enquiry, I felt the request was downright rude.

So I chose in the end to ignore her. Guess how long her additional wait time was without cutting ahead? Under a minute. Here's to hoping that my stand for us older folk was simultaneously not a chillul Hashem, and a mussar lesson to boot.