Me placing the box on the scale with the prepaid label facing the employee:
"I printed the label and sealed the box, it's all ready for you."
The other customer with an armful of loose items:
"How do I make these go different places?"
this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2026
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us: "The package contains no lithium batteries. Here's a list of the contents on the customs declaration and a receipt for the duties paid."
them: "I have to bring my own box?! Isn't it your job to give me one for free? Also, whaddayamean I can't send cigarettes to my nephew back in my home country?!"
A guy in front of me: what do you mean I can't send black pudding to my friend on the other side of the country? I promised him I would send it. It doesn't matter it's bank holiday weekend, who cares that blood based perishable product would be in transit for a week and stink to high heaven, I promised!
That went on for at least 20 minutes. I had queued for a few hours and lost my will to live
I actually know a way he could have shipped it, but he probably wouldn't want to pay that much.
Freeze the black pudding, flash freeze if you have access to a commercial flash freezer. I don't know what the shops would be called in the UK, but here in the US you'd go to an industrial supply company like Granger, grab a styrofoam cooler as the "box", grab some packing peanuts as filler, and purchase half a pound of dry ice. Seal that up and the food can be in transit for up to 1.5 weeks without worries.
This is going to make my blood shipping so much easier.
Everybody laughing at this comment needs to know that THIS DOES HAPPEN. Ex-employee had to return her laptop, so we send a UPS return label via e-mail. She shows up at the UPS store with the laptop in hand and is surprised when they tell her it needs to be in a box. We received the laptop inside the wildest combination of two boxes taped back-to-back and filled with garbage that didn't even form effective packing material.
Some people have literally never shipped anything in their life before, despite being 30 🤷
I've never shipped anything through a UPS store but their website explicitly states that they offer packing services.
Yeah they sell boxes and shit there. I don’t know what that other commenter is complaining about. I’ve had to ship laptops back to employers. Usually they first ship you an empty box specifically for shipping laptops. It even includes a sticker you put on the outside about lithium batteries or whatever. I’d say it’s more the company’s fault and not this ex-employee’s fault for how the laptop is returned. Plus I’ve had to return laptops to places where I’ve been laid off. They’re lucky I didn’t piss on the thing and take a hammer to it. They can be happy they are getting back anything at all. Send a goddamn shipping box for Jesus.
You are intrinsically more likely to get stuck behind people who spend a long time there than people who spend a short time there, even if the effective people outnumber the ineffective people by roughly under the same factor of how many times longer the ineffective people take
Yup. Survivor bias, just like when people say modern online dating sucks, one of the contributing factors is it's rotating the same shitty people through the pool, because the good ones have already matched or left in frustration and gone permanently.
All the good ones are taken
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That and every register will eventually fill up with long running processes.
If people usually take 1 minute, but only a few take 10-15 minutes, you'll be far more likely to see the 15 minute customers than the 1 minute ones. And they'll eventually fill up all the available register space as all the 1 minute customers finish up and move on.
This is why we don't leave memory clean up to the masses anymore.
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A friend of mine made a game of this. At the grocery store, she labels people with "Oh Shit I Have To Pay?" Syndrome.
Her and her daughter text each other every time they encounter a person who somehow arrives at a cashier completely unprepared, who somehow managed to stand in line for several minutes and didn't realize that they had to actually do something when they reached the front of the line.
When sending mail like in the meme I get it what people could to wrong. You can prepare much there.
But how in the world is someone unprepared at a normal grocery store? I just lay my items down. Wait. Then the cashier scans, while scanning I take the items and put them into my Bag. Then I say that I want to pay with card, and I take out my card, hold it against the money-vanish-machine until it beeps and say goodbye. There is nothing to prepare. So what in the world could be unprepared for some customers? I'm actually curious. Are there idiots that like don't even place down the items or what xD
She calls it "Oh Shit I Have to Pay?” because that's the step that most people completely tune out. They'll put their items down, wait for the cashier to scan them, get everything bagged and then when the cashier says "that'll be XXX" people just snap out of it like they're dreaming and then fumble around to find their card. Like the step was completely unexpected. "Oh shit, I have to pay for all this?!"
How do people like that remember how to breathe?
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Zomg, I had this issue at an event the other day.
It's a baseball game with pizza food trucks. When you arrive you are given 10 tickets which effectively work like cash.
Go to the food truck, order and give tickets. Easy.
There are only two trucks because some had to back out. Lines are long, I'm in line for about 45 minutes, but I'm watching a baseball game nearby so no big deal. Truck I'm at has a giant sign "pepperoni or cheese 4 tickets".
By the time the people just in front of me get to the order taker I hear the conversation
Lady: "I don't know how many tickets I have, how much pizza I can order, but I want 16 pieces of cheese".
Order taker: "you have 40 tickets"
Lady: "what does that mean?"
45 minutes in line specifically for food, she doesn't read the sign, count her tickets, prepare a plan, nothing.
Well if the average Americans reading proficiency is the same as a 4th grader some of them straight up can't read the signs.
Yeah, you gotta remember plenty are at collegiate reading levels, so the low end has got to have plenty of real doozies to average out that low
Lol that's why the line was so long in the first place. Probably half the people in that line did the same thing.
Which is exactly true. I met up with the truck owner as he has a brick and mortar near my library. He said like 50% of people had no idea what to do when they got there.
Dude said he made a killing though, he was there like 4 hours and made 1400 bucks.
This is so many people. It's astounding. So many people just seem completely overwhelmed at all times no matter where they are or what they're doing and cannot simply prepare for what comes next. I suspect a large part of it is they're just distracted on their phone like zombies.
Omg, I'm a bus driver and this is my number one pet peeve.
This just reminded me of a funny story about a North Korean refuge who had escaped to South Korea. She was trying to figure out how buses worked and would stare at people getting on the bus to figure out how they paid.
She said that she noticed everyone would just kind of bump there butt on a sensor when they got on. Not knowing that something like contactless payment existed, she assumed that it must have just been some weird cultural thing that she didn't fully understand.
So she worked up the courage to board a bus and just bumped her butt against the sensor. Obviously it didn't do anything and the bus driver must have thought she was crazy.
Edit: Found the video! https://youtube.com/shorts/L8DeAqXzOtk
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Preparation.
Nah, last time I sent something I had several questions for the person at the counter and I still finished in a quarter of the time of the other people. There has to be something more.
Introverts vs extroverts.
Some don’t mind shooting the shit and chatting.
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I swear, I had one couple asking the clerk where they should send the presents they were sending to a country on the other side of the world. The clerk was trying to tell them he had no idea where their family lived and couldn't help them. They tried half a dozen times to get him to give them an address, no fucking clue why.
I can't even.
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At my work, you can always tell who works on the manufacturing floor and who has a desk job by how efficient they are in the cafeteria. The suits (desk people) take their time, stand in the middle of walk ways, have small talk when they should be moving on, etc. The operations folk get what they need and skedaddle because we are trained to be efficient or make things efficient.
Move Karen! I know you have a long day of sitting on your butt, so why dont you move so I can have lunch? /jk mostly
i feel this so hard. they are entirely unaware that they are occupying the thoroughfare and i cannot imagine how one can be so oblivious.
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I want to send my grandson this claymore. Where do I put the stamp?
Sword or landmine?
Yes.
Sword for my son and claymore with this side toward enemy to my evil step mother
Some people slow down when people are behind them. This holds true no matter the location or circumstance. For some its the thought of having some control in their life. Even if that control consists of being a dick length.
If you drive long distances these people are everywhere. 100km/h zone, one lane, dude drives 95. Passing lane opens, you start passing, dude suddenly matches your speed. People like this should have their licences taken away, no leniency.
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Maybe you have a small package
mailed it
Or, if you prefer
boom, posted
because we live in a simulation. same reason why if i look out my window the intersection by my house is calm. if i walk my dogs, seven assholes will drive by too fast and without stopping.
certain threads just .. idle. 😂
They only took two minutes too but there’s a time dilation field that increases the closer you get to the front of the line.
Conditional memory. You're pretty much hard wired to remember unusual things and forget unremarkable things, also things that have an emotional response are likelier to be remembered, such as being frustrated. Therefore, you remember the bad (and occasionally good) things better.
ETA: Pretty sure there's a proper psychological term for this, but I've forgotten it, could someone more knowledgeable chime in?
yes, but that doesn't explain why it takes people in front of me 5m to order a coffee and a pastry and it takes me 30seconds.
but i do know why, it's because they are weird and needy and need to interact and question and hem and haw rather than just know what they want and ask for it. same type of person who will then come back and complain to the person behind the counter how it wasn't good or they should get their money back or something equally stupid.
it's that i have respect for service workers, as I was one for years, and I want to make our interact quick and pleasant rather than miserable and drawn out.
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Same. And it's not conditional memory like others have suggested. Other people literally waste 10 to 20 minutes of my time when I visit the post office and when I reach the counter it's done and done in less than 60 seconds.
I was checking out at Aldi the other day, and I shit you not, the woman in front of me with a huge cart of groceries waited until it was her turn to start slowly putting her things on the belt one by one.
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