Toronto City Life » A very thin line

A very thin line

Posted on August 9th, 2020 –

I took a trip to a local grocery store this morning to get some coffee and bread. I was surprised to see a line formed outside of the front doors, similar to ones we’ve seen not so long ago.

“That’s weird,” I thought as I peeked into the seemingly empty store expecting it to be visibly busy, so I asked the security guard why people were being held back.

He told me that there were only two cashiers working and that the lines to pay were causing unacceptable congestion. I couldn’t tell if this was true from outside so I just shrugged my shoulders and plodded back into line.

My little detour managed to lose me a few spots so I ended up waiting for an additional 10 minutes, not because the line was long but because the tiny trickle of people leaving/entering was excruciatingly slow.

In all, roughly 5 people had left by the time I got inside the spacious store. Not exactly the deluge that I was given as a reason for being kept outside in the first place. But maybe the crowd was inside, away from view?

Nope.

As I circled the store there I counted no more than 30 people inside, and no one at the checkouts. There was only one entrance / exit so unless these “long lines” spontaneously de-materialized into thin air, where did all of the shoppers disappear to?

I got a sort-of answer to my question when I strolled up to pay for my purchases at the still-completely-empty checkout. (This is not an exaggeration, there were literally no people in line).

I told the cashier that people were being made to wait outside based on a claim that the store, or at least the cashiers, were crowded. Except … where were all the people?

She turned to me and with a heavy, sputtering Filipino accent said, “only have two cashiers working so need to limit lines. Too many people!”

“Yeah, I already heard that. But what lines?”

“Would you like bags, sir?” she replied, seemingly ignoring my question.

I leaned in and made an obvious show of looking around to try to spot these imaginary “lines” of people, then asked again, “what lines?”

She stared at me blankly for a moment, as if the question had overloaded her brain, and only managed to blurt out “bags?” a second time before turning away. Didn’t even wait for my response.

I decided to ask one more time. “I’m sorry, what lines are you talking about? Was it very busy earlier?”

She turned around and, once again seemingly ignoring the obvious revelation that she and store security had been shoveling bullshit, cocked her head to the side with noticeable annoyance (I guess at having to hold up the throngs of invisible people waiting behind me), and asked once again if I wanted bags.

I decided to drop the questions. I knew it wasn’t a language barrier; she’d already used the same words I had. This was possibly an example of cognitive dissonance on full display. Or maybe it was a form of genuine mental illness in which she was hallucinating long lines of people where there were none. Maybe this was what life is like in the government’s “new reality”.

This could almost be a humorous anecdote if it wasn’t so indicative of the general public’s unwillingness / inability to see the reality that’s quite literally right in front of them.

When the police or military brutalize them, kick in their house doors, or violently pull them out of their cars for staying out too late or not obeying the newest set of arbitrary government dictates, as is being done in Australia (be sure to read the last few paragraphs!), a virtuous example being promoted here in Canada, these same people will ostensibly deny that what they’re experiencing actually exists. And we can be certain that this won’t be the result of a philosophical inquisition into the nature of reality.

It’s hard to know when a line has been crossed when that line doesn’t even exist.