On inefficiency and the behaviour of others

Was at the Ikea cafe for lunch yesterday around 1pm. As usual, it was jam-packed with weekend shoppers but finding a table wasn't too hard. That was the easy part. The yucky part started as I joined the queue to order my food.

First, the queue was soooo long. It probably stretched over 30 - 40 people deep, but as Ikea lines move quite rapidly I didn't really mind the wait. Ahead of me was a mother - daughter team, behind me were a courting couple. Uhmm, call me old-fashioned, but I don't think the queue line at Ikea cafe is the right place to exhibit how "close" you are to each other. Such scenes are best left until you are together, alone. This "angmoh" guy and the "local" girl practically had their hands all over each other, hugging and displaying their affection like nobody's business *censored scene*. Think of spineless jellyfish fused into one and you'll get my drift. *bleagh*

OK, so that was on behaviour. Now comes inefficiency. If you were the management of Ikea and you knew that lunch time was one of the busiest periods at the cafe, wouldn't you open up more cashiers? Nope. Didn't occur to them. Out of the four cashier counters available, only two were open. Naturally, that led to backlog of people holding trays of food patiently queuing up to pay. By the time I got my food and joined this queue to pay, again, the queue was around 20 - 30 people deep. Oh well. I thought they were going to open all the counters when several staff appeared, but they were only there to replenish the cashiers who were open. Eh? Couldn't they see that people were waiting in line? Aren't they empowered to quickly open more counters and reduce the queues? Must be the Malaysia Boleh attitude.

Then comes behaviour again. The mother - daughter team in front of me... The mother decided that it was too tiring to hold on to the tray of food (one tray, one plate of food, two glasses and some cutlery - so very heavy, right?) so she put it down on the railing. I shouldn't have any problem with this, except that the railing is not within arms reach of the queue - meaning she stepped out of line to put down the tray. And when the line starts moving, she steps out of line again to pick up the tray and shuffle forward a few steps then steps out of line again to put it down. After two - three manuveurs like this, I was starting to get irritated with her. Finally it was her turn to pay. Guess what? With over 20+ people queuing behind her, she chooses to pay by credit card for RM38 worth of food! *shakes head and rolls eyes* Before you suggest that she didn't have the cash to pay for the food, she did. When the charge didn't go through within the first 2 minutes, she dug into her handbag and brought out a RM50 ringgit note to pay for her food.

People are so.... *words fail me*