What strange behaviour have you experienced in the supermarket?

[silverribbonxmastree]

Yesterday, I was in Sainsbury's with my teenage daughter. We were walking towards the end of the aisle with a trolley and it was blocked by an elderly woman, her grandson (?) aged about 15/16 and a shop assistant who were talking. The lad. Saw us approaching and wanting to get past but refused to move. I said excuse me and he reluctantly moved. Didn't think much of it.

We were then at the checkout putting the items on the conveyor belt. The lad walked past and the next thing I know is that out trolley is rammed into us. No apologies or anything. So I thought ok maybe it was an accident again and arrived on.

We were walking out of the supermarket and Sod's law they were just ahead of us. The elderly lady was walking very slowly and the lad ahead of her a bit. My daughter tried to overtake him and he blocked her way sidestepping in front of her as she tried to pass. I called her back to me and just said to her to let them get ahead of us as I was beginning to realise by this 3rd incident that it was all intentional by now!

So we walked way behind them. We saw a car slowly reverse out of a parking space and the lad stick 2 fingers up at this person.

As they were taking so long to get to their car and unpack, we held back a bit at the trolley park (as I didn't want him to see where I had parked as I had other shopping to do and thought he might damage the car as 'punishment' to me). He then started staring at us and walked towards us with their trolley to return it. At this point, we just returned to the shop to avoid any confrontation.

I wasn't shaken up by it but felt quite sad that he felt the need to be so hostile and try to intimidate us. I do wonder if he would have behaved like this is my strapping 20 year old son was with us! His gran was completely oblivious to all of this!

Anyone else had this or similar?

@SmellyBottomHead

Nooooooooo *@silverribbonxmastree*, you need to have fun with people like that. Do that hand/finger wiggle either side of your head, laugh manically, then skip off It will terrify him especially if you look middle aged and respectable

I do this when I'm in the car and someone does something stupid. Or blow a kiss. Such fun!

@Mumteedum such a simple, effective phrase' excuse me' isn't it?

Recently someone was stood at the end of an aisle blocked by two people chatting. I was behind the two people who were chatting choosing something off the shelf. The person who was blocked looked at me and mumbled so I said "I'm sure they'll move if you just say excuse me" he replied with an awkward laugh. He still stood there and didn't say anything. Weird.

No referral To social services for that poor boy? How sad.

I assumed SS were involved as he was repeatedly running away.
I was so annoyed about the attitude of that Officer and complete lack of sympathy or understanding for that kid that to this day I wish I'd complained. He'd be all grown up now.

I was at the checkout and the woman in front of me removed every single piece of cardboard and plastic packaging from every item including porridge oats which she decanted into her own container, each individual package was removed regardless of if it was cardboard or plastic. She then promptly handed all of the packaging to the cashier and walked out of the store with loose biscuits, tea bags, fruit and vegetables all jiggling around in her shopping bag. The huge queue of customers which had built up were not best pleased and the cashier just sat there open mouthed.

I still do the thing started on here years ago.. I out the divider the wrong way around and see if the person behind moves it

At our local morrisons there's two self checkouts for larger shops, they have a conveyor belt, scanning machine then a large bagging area.
I've lost count of people who don't put their bags in the bagging section and pack as they go along, they scan their huge shop and place it in piles on the bagging area then pay then spend ages putting it into various bags in their trolley while the queue builds up, they must think its Aldi 🙄

The posters gleefully crowing about how they intentionally block people they know full well are trying to get by unless they verbally say "excuse me": as someone with a deaf-mute immediate family member, who works with a non-verbal autistic person, this is really crappy and disableist behaviour.

And don't start saying "but statistically they're unlikely to be deaf or non-verbal" - you don't know, and why choose to be a massive dickhead to strangers who have done absolutely nothing to you?

It's also possible they don't speak English.

Not in a supermarket, but I used to work in Boots when I was in my early 20s. A couple came in, both prob in their late 50s/ early 60s.woman seemed very bossy and generally hostile towards her meeker husband. Woman marches ahead, man behind her. I was busy tidying the shelves nearby. Man accidentally crashes into the side shelves of the aisle... about 100 packs of tablets fall on the floor, scattering everywhere and part of the shelf came off and crashed loudly to the floor.
The wife turned round and shot her husband such a hateful look and screamed at him, ‘did you do that?’. Poor guy looked terrified, and mumbled ‘no, it was her’ whilst pointing to me! so she turned her gaze to me, called me an idiot and off they went.

@WisconsinRaw

The posters gleefully crowing about how they intentionally block people they know full well are trying to get by unless they verbally say "excuse me": as someone with a deaf-mute immediate family member, who works with a non-verbal autistic person, this is really crappy and disableist behaviour.

And don't start saying "but statistically they're unlikely to be deaf or non-verbal" - you don't know, and why choose to be a massive dickhead to strangers who have done absolutely nothing to you?

It's also possible they don't speak English.

Who said that they do that? I would agree anyone doing that to anyone on purpose is being unpleasant. I didn't notice anyone crowing! I was commenting that so many people will stand there awkwardly rather than ask politely to get by. Yes, that's true occasionally someone may have another reason they are unable to say excuse me. I was simply saying it seems uncommon for people to do so now and it baffled me.

I'm only 4ft11 so people (mainly men) seem to think it's OK to barge infront of me, push me or ram me with trollies. It only stopped when I started shopping with my 6tf built like a tank, heavy metal drummer husband.
The funny thing is that he's soft as anything but people are wary of him.
When I was a child people were much worse to me and would ram me hard enough to leave bruises because I was "in the way" but they never asked me to move or I would have. What's worse is that due to my size I looked a lot younger than I was so at 5 I looked 3 and 9 I looked 6 or 7. So these people were essentially aiming for very young child to hurt them.

@Cocolapew

The 4 crossiants made me laugh . Not a supermarket but years ago I worked with a woman whose friend had gone to Ikea. She was standing looking a bit lost and a worker asked could he help. She told him she had lost her son. Immediately he got on his walkie talkie and the whole shop was shut down so nobody could get out. They then asked for a description of her son so they could circulate it. She started with "well he's 35.."

I had this in an arcade when my DS was little (about 3-4 year old), He was in a huff that we where leaving soon and so hid to sulk. I knew he wouldnt be far because he would never let us leave his sight and he would never wander of with strangers but we couldnt see him.

We looked around for 10 minutes then I calmly told the reception desk I couldnt find him. Out came the walkie talkies and suddenly a swat team of security decended ordering lockdown, CCTV, asking for recent photos and took a detailed discription of his outfit and look etc... we where calm until that point but it was like they where panicing and freaking out which suddenly made us worry.

We found him about 10 minutes later (he wedged himself between to machines where he couldnt be seen but he could see everything and was watching the chaos unfold) only about 3 meters from where we last saw him and took him back to reception trying to explain we found him.

Everyone was running round like headless chickens and ignoring us, we tried to explain he was fine and we had found him for about 10 minutes while they kept blanking us looking for a non existant kidnapper and we just ended up leaving.

Wonder how long they looked for a random child? because they didnt seem to want to accept we where the same people and had found now him even though he was clearly the discription of the child they where looking for (he had a unique hairstyle and a personalised jumper with his name on lol and I was litrally trying to show them that he was now with me).

I do wonder if he would have behaved like this is my strapping 20 year old son was with us!
Would he be heck do any of that!
My strange one was I was in a Spar on the far side of Manchester from where I live with 3 teenage girls. I was as working a youth worker and we had popped in to get snacks or something. I'd never been in there before and neither had the girls.
We were looking at the biscuits and a woman who I'd never seen in my life stood next to me, looked me up and down and sneered, " just look at you! You think you are marvellous but your not, there's nothing special about you' For context I had jeans, t shirt and a pair of trainers on and was deciding whether we should get ginger nuts as well as digestives!! So not oarading up and down posting and taking selfish or owt! 😂😂😂

The girls started to stick up for me but she was about to turn on them so I ushered them out of the shop to avoid confrontation.
It was a talking point for a while
I don't know why she thought that I supposedly thought I was so good!!

@sueelleker

*I did worry about dh appearing in one of these. We were in a supermarket, checking we had everything when he suddenly said “We need milk. Human milk.” Thankfully he meant human milk as in milk for us humans to drink, as opposed to cat milk for the cat to drink but I do feel for anyone who overheard that!* I used to work PT shelf filling in Asda; one night a couple of teenage boys asked me if we had pigeon milk-I just said "are you having me on?" and they walked away. I still don't know if it was a joke, if they wanted milk to feed a pigeon, or thought that pigeons gave milk!

Could've been worse. Don't need cat food, we need meat. Human meat.

Why was your daughter trying to overtake him though if she was so far ahead that younhad to call her back?

He sounds a very unhappy, angry person but personally I can't stand people who just let their kids wander everywhere and get in everyone's personal space as if they are the only person on the earth.

I was reaching up to get something off a high shelf in Sainsburys one day and my trolley was right next to me at the side of the aisle
All of a sudden, I felt the trolley bash into me. A woman deliberately pushed her trolley into mine as it was in the way. No, she didn't want anything from the shelves there but just to get past, the wide aisle was empty apart from us and our two trolleys. It left quite a bruise!

I'm laughing here. DS2 when he was 3 (12 years ago!) also disappeared in IKEA as we were eating. The whole lockdown, code red, close the entrances business too - there he was behind a little inshot just nearby 'mopping' an area with a mop from the shelf. Hysterical.

@BluePeterVag honestly your exmil sounded everything that’s wrong with the world, one is just grateful she is closer to death than her poor ‘victims’

She is truly vile @Acatnamedfox I have never known anyone like it. She puts on a Hyacinth Bucket accent, and then likes to shock people by swearing.
She has a surname which is often confused with another similar surname, think Davies / Davis or Robinson / Robertson. Many times her name is incorrectly read out when she is waiting for something, eg a medical appointment. If the poor soul who works there says her name even slightly wrong she will sit there and wait and wait and wait until she can complain she has been forgotten. They will explain they called her and that is the bait, she gets all shouty and says they didn’t, they said another name but not hers.
Her blood pressure must be through the roof!