I try to avoid a line with older people in it (and I am pretty old), but I gauge the line to get in by the amount of crap people have in their cart. You could have four people in front of you that only have three or four things in each of their carts, or have two people who have so much stuff that you wonder if this is their first time they have been out shopping since 1977 and are out of everything.
Even then, **** can happen. I got behind a couple of real goofballs in the same week. The store was packed on both occasions, and in each situation, the people in line had moderately full shopping carts. On one occastion, this cowboy type guy (judging by how he was dressed and by the belt buckle that was as big as a trash can lid) was checking out. He was around 30 years old I guess, and must have had some disorder. He would pick up something out of his shopping cart and put it on the conveyor belt, then pick up something else and put it beside the prior item. Then take the first item and put it back in his cart. Or put three or four things on the conveyor, then move one or two of them further back on the conveyor belt. I got to wondering if I could pick up on what his thought process was. It wasn't as if he came across something that sort of went with something he had already put on the belt and wanted to keep them together. Then he would put a bag of something in his cart, then another, and another, then take one of the bags and move it further to the front of the cart, or further to the back of the cart. It took forever for him to check out.
The other time it was an old lady, probably about my age, and the gal at the register must have been used to dealing with her because when she would fill one of the plastic bags with stuff, she would pull the bag off the little rack thing, and tie the top of the bag with two, not one but two, overhand knots. Every bag. The old lady would put the bag in the cart and wait on the next one. As she added more and more bags, she would stop and open one already in the cart, struggling to undo both knots, peer inside the bag checking out the contents of the bag, then tie the two knots back in place and figure out where she wanted it in the cart. The whole time this was going on, the cashier would be holding the next double knotted bag on top of the carousel thing while the lady fidgeted with the bags already in the cart.
