What happened to supermarket manners and courtesy?

For whatever reason, shopping at the supermarket has become an excursion in bad manners, IMHO. Case in point: yesterday while waiting to check out grocery items in a line, the woman in front decided that she needed a pack of cigarettes - had to have those cigarettes right there and then. She asked the check out cashier for a pack, after which the cashier directed her to counter where the cigarettes were available. However, the cigarette-craving-female (CCF) expected the cashier to leave her cash and get them for her! After being informed that the CCF would have to go buy them herself, the woman asked the cashier and the line-up of shoppers one of whom was me, to wait until she went to buy a pack.

"I don't think so!" I told Ms CCF.

"But it will only take a minute!" she responded, starting to move out of the line in quest of her cigarettes.

"Why don't you wait and buy your cigarettes after you check out your items?" I told her, quite miffed at that point.

The cashier for her part, realizing that I was somewhat PO'd, jumped in and told the woman that if she chose to go buy her cigarettes, then she would check out my items first. Internally, I smiled. After a five second pause while the CCF considered her options, she left her items in pursuit of her pack of cigarettes. Meanwhile, the cashier checked out my items first until Ms CCF returned to her place in front of me, presumably happier for having a pack of cigarettes in her purse.

Then there's the people who feel they are entitled to taste cherries - note the plural form used here - as they bag them. There are no signs visible anywhere offering free cherries and/or taste-testing, people! One pays before tasting! A few are dropped in the plastic bags and the remainder of the cherries are stuffed into mouths, as cherry juice drips down the side of their faces. These are the same people who also spit their cherry pits to the ground or back on the cherry display. Nothing more disgusting than coming accross or finding a saliva ridden cherry pit during hand picking. Blech!

Also falling into this category are shoppers who strip the leaves off fresh corns and throw them on to the ground. Also worthy of mention are veggie choosers who press tomatoes and other fragile veggies like peaches, nectarines et al, to the point of leaving indented finger marks. Don't we all just love to eat fruit with somebody else's fingers on the surface? Again - blech!

Or how about people who remove the enclosure tabs inside orange juice containers for whatever reason and then replace back into the refrigerator display.

Not to be overlooked are shoppers who take the shopping carts to their cars without replacing them in the allotted area, allowing the shopping cart wheels to roll on to fenders.

In any case and to return to Ms Cigarette Craving Woman, last time I spotted her as I was pulling out of the parking lot, she was puffing away while emptying the shopping cart. Talk about money going up in smoke. Really.