A 'me first' attitude

On Friday afternoon, I was witness to a most disturbing phenomenon. While sauntering through a local store, I saw two women enter, take a cart each and heard one of them call out "Where is the tissue paper?" and further asking in a very loud voice for help finding the tissue paper. Subsequently, an employee pointed it out at which the lady announced she was "buying it all" in a voice that filled the store.

The tissues where on a top shelf in the rear, and the employee aided her in getting the boxes down, during which period another customer said she wanted some and was told again in the store-filling voice, "They are all mime." The woman continued to loudly announce that "all the stuff was hers, she was buying the whole shelf, the end of the world was coming and she had all the tissues." This continued from the rear of the store and was still ongoing as I paid and left.

A number of things crossed my mind: Was she sane? Why weren't she or her friend embarrassed by her actions? Why did the store allow her to act in this manner? While I understand it is a store's purpose to sell things, but to aid and abet hoarding in such an obvious manner surely displeases more people than is prudent.

I awoke this morning still upset by the amount of damage to our world that has been and will be done by this mindset of "me first."

Gerald Gagnon

Lake Zurich