Shopping in Lidl, wanting to punch a customer in the queue.
One of the more noticeable things about behaviour under lock down is the new queueing etiquette.
It’s only been what, four weeks, and already the time hallowed, much beloved and culturally significant British queue (books have been written, check out the always brilliant Joe Moran) has undergone some weird and irreversible changes.
Take talking in the queue. Queue chat. Once upon a time the unspoken rule was that queue communication was limited to the people you were out shopping with, and a normal, everyday, social tone was required. You weren’t encouraged to engage with adjacent shoppers, other than to politely encourage your neighbour to move forward a little, occasionally exhaling a barely audible sigh indicating displeasure at the rate at which the checkout was dispatching items ahead of you, or to express dismay that a whole sherry trifle had tumbled off the conveyor belt and splattered onto your shoes (that happened to me one Christmas in M&S, and I did what polite British folks do in that situation, and laughed moderately while wiping the jelly and custard off my Doc Martens, reassuring my fellow shopper that, no, it’s fine, happens all the time, and what’s a bit of whipped cream in your socks anyway…)
But times have changed. Two metres of social distance have completely annihilated all previous social etiquette built up over centuries of steady and quiet evolution. Two metres of social distance creates a whole new world.
For most people two metres presents an unbridgeable social gap. No social intercourse is possible anywhere along the shopping line. The queue is deathly quiet.
But for an interesting and very audible few, two metres is exactly the same dimensions as their 4X4 SUV off-the-road vehicle, and they behave as if they were rallying around the New Forest, windows open, not a care in the world, scaring the wildlife and gouging up the mud, sharing the opinions of the average 4X4 SUV off the road gas guzzling driver.
These opinions tend to be as obnoxious as they are loud. One guy in the queue a few people behind me in Lidl this morning was expatiating at some length on his view of the lock down. He was not happy that he could not visit his favourite all-you-can-eat buffet, walk his dogs whenever and wherever he fucking well liked, or take his kids to the coast for an ice cream. “Trapped in the house for a bunch of fucking fairies,” was I believe his astute analysis of the situation. No idea what he meant by fairies, and assume he was thinking of snowflakes. Just an undiscriminating arsehole.
Of course nobody in the queue felt able to tackle him. And he was too far down the queue for me to say anything; I didn’t want to shout over the heads of intervening shoppers, that felt rude. Shouting “shut the fuck up you ignorant twat,” might have scared the kids in the next aisle, and the parents were having a hard enough time as it was. So we all dutifully kept our mouths shut, kept our distance, and inched slowly forward uncomplainingly.
When I left the shop it occurred to me that this chap wasn’t the usual customer demographic at my local Lidl. And I really wished I’d thought of something clever to yell at him. “Fuck off back to Waitrose you fucking arsehole.” Profound, and to the point, but just a little too late.