I need to let off some steam! Can't quite work out why this has annoyed me so much.
Sorry this is long, but here's the full story:
I have to bring 5 year DS home for lunch from school every day (he is in reception and the school say they will be able to include him eventually, but first they want to train the midday supervisors in allergy management and make sure other children are always wiping their hands and faces after eating).
DS is a bit sad that he is the only one who comes home for lunch, so I try to make it special for him. Today, he decided that he wanted hot dogs, but we hadn't got any rolls, so I said he couldn't. He suggested that we could buy some rolls from the Co-op across the road, and he promised to eat extra quickly afterwards.
Anyway, the Co-op had run out of what we wanted, but DS took a strong fancy to a french stick he saw at the front of the shop ("Please can we check the ingredients?) The trouble is, all Co-op bakery products 'may contain' everything from milk and soya to crustaceans and fish! so we usually avoid them. DS said we should "ask the lady" (he knows all the bakery stuff is made on the premises, so we decided to ask what else was made on the same trays. Asking the lady took maybe a minute or 90 seconds, and she was very helpful.
I was just getting out my purse to pay when a man barged in front of us, saying "I can't wait while you talk about bread all day" and thrust a wodge of money wrapped around an electricity smart card at the shop assistant. "I'm in a hurry", he said, "I've got to get back to work and I've got the dog waiting in the car". The shop assistant's mouth dropped open slightly, but she served him first because he looked intimidating.
What he wanted done took AGES - far longer than we would have been - and we were in a hurry too bacause I had to get DS back to school. There was plenty of time for him to tell me that he knew all about bread, was a qualified sports nutritionist, that we should eat soda bread instead, that we should make it ourselves and buy a breadmaker (we have one), that he didn't let his children eat chocolate or sweets when they were young so he knows all about checking ingredients, that I should feed DS porridge and strawberries and banana for breakfast (actually he had porridge and strawberries yesterday but is allergic to banana)... and so on!
Of course, that man was just being an idiot, and you always do get people like that. I think what really wound me up was the assumption that, if you want to check ingredients, you should get to the back of the queue. Normally, we do wait until there is no queue if we can, but this man has made me think... WHY should DS's genuine need to check ingredients be less important than that man's dog waiting in the car? Why should people with allergies have to stay at the back of the queue while people push past them (it has happened to us before in supermarket cafes and other places). I don't want DS to get the message that his needs aren't important, that he should either take risks by not asking about ingredients or just go hungry at lunchtimes.
If you've read all that, thank you - I feel so much better for getting it off my chest!