At the checkout

Today after teaching a plump, rich, lazy Russian boy English, I went into a supermarket in Moscow called Seven Continent. My mission target was to get some vegetables and a bottle bitter lemon, hardly a big shop and an idea that I would later regret.

It took me less than five minutes to weigh and bag my battered and bruised vegetables and to get my bitter lemon, but it took me thirty minutes to pay for them. The queue, or as Americans call it the 'line' was a total nightmare. We will call them lines here. The lines at each till, were at least twenty people long. Each checkout till was divided by barriers. People stood in line with their metal shopping baskets on the floor, each time the line inched forward, people would push their basket with their foot along the floor to move down the line in the blind hope of reaching that Nirvana, the checkout till and freedom.

A woman with a bright gold coat, purple finger nails and yellow trousers stood next to me. She looked like so many stereotyped Russian women here, she looked like a woman not sure what outfit to wear when she got up in the morning or what fashion decade it was, so simply put on something of everything and went out. She hovered next to me scanning each line, waiting to jump in, waiting for her moment. I guarded my spot like wolf in the snow protecting his meat. After about ten minutes I snapped, my British constraint all gone, with a bony finger, I bravely tapped her on her gold shoulder and said in the only Russian I knew "HeT". She replied back "No" and stood her ground completely ignoring me. Eventually, after some time, she jumped in the other line next to me. The person in the line behind her said nothing and gold coat woman advanced in front of about ten people behind her to pay for her food, no one said a thing. Life went on.

I could feel my blood boiling as I stood in my line, listening to the constant but very annoying slow bleeps of the checkout till, bleep, bleep, bleep. These supermarkets bleeps, sound like an old tennis computer game form the 1970's. I spotted another woman in the far distance in front of me in my own line, she was speaking to a person in the line. Then to my total horror, she then just went in front of me and everyone else behind her. I can only compare waiting in line (queuing, spellings vary) in Russia to be like their driving on the roads. Lane and line respect have very little meaning. Share lanes, share lines, share beds, share wives. Why wait behind the person or car in front of you? Just go in front. No one will mind.

When I eventually reached the woman at the checkout till, I felt like a man who had just won the lottery. I wanted to shout at her 'put the food in the bag now woman!'. Typical of my luck, the paper till roll ran out so she disappeared for about three days to find another one. The checkout woman then returned, she slowly put on her glasses and blindly swiped my meat bread rolls several times that I had paid for before from the bakery below but had forgotten not to put them in with my other shopping. When they failed to produce a price, she looked up at me like a a wife who does not want to give a blow job but still continued to swipe the bread rolls, hoping to see a price come up, she reminded me of a zombie sheep. I think if I did that kind of job all day I would become a zombified sheep as well. I snatched the rolls from her and with shaking hands, I put them into my plastic shopping bag, paid in cash and left the shop screaming like a gay man at a wedding.

In some ways, I admire these Russian people, in my own supermarket experience here, they don't seem to get angry and just accept people jumping in front of them in food checkout lines with an almost blank, depressive acceptance. If this happened in my own country, in the much bedraggled and down beaten United Kingdom, people would get very angry, fights would break out and people would be punched or stabbed. Not so in Moscow, adapt, accept or die.

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