We’re all familiar with the unwritten supermarket queue rule – if you have a full trolley and someone has just a couple of items, it’s polite to let them go first. But one shopper refused to let another cut in – resulting in a verbal checkout clash.

We’ve all been there. The grocery store is packed, the trolleys are backed up, and only two registers are open. The line barely moves. You’ve been standing there long enough to start mentally reorganising your pantry.

Then it happens.

A woman appears, clutching just two items. She’s in a rush and asks to jump ahead.

Is it rude to refuse?

One shopper has taken to an online forum, revealing she did just that, and suffered the wrath of her fellow shoppers. She described the scene:

“The grocery store was packed today and only two registers were open. I had a full cart and had been waiting in line for about 15 minutes.

“Just as I reached the conveyor belt, a woman approached me holding only a carton of eggs and milk. She asked if she could jump ahead of me because she was ‘in a huge rush’ and only had two items.”

Any other day, the woman may have just let her skip the queue. But not this day.

“I was exhausted and my back was hurting, so I said, ‘Sorry, but I’ve been waiting here for 15 minutes and I just want to get home’.”

And that didn’t go down well.

“She got offended and started complaining loudly to the people behind me about how ‘some people are just miserable’ and that it would have only taken her 30 seconds. To my surprise, the guy behind me actually agreed with her and called me a jerk for not being ‘neighbourly’.

“I feel like the point of a line is to wait your turn, regardless of how many items you have. But since multiple people made me feel like a villain, I’m wondering if I was being unnecessarily petty.

“Am I the asshole for making her wait her turn?”

What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.