Trader Joe’s on a Saturday morning is not the place to go shopping if you are in a hurry.  The place is mobbed.  It’s like a Wal-Mart crowd on a special sales day crammed into a space 1/100^th the size. 

There are 10 cash registers open with about 10 people in line for each one.  I quickly scan the number of items in each basket among the waiting customers.  I quickly assess how efficient each cashier is and then, combining the two pieces of information, I choose a line.  While in line, I always second guess my choice.  The other lines always appear to be moving faster than the one that I choose. 

Normally I just wait it out, suck it up, and live with my choice.  But today was going to be different.  I saw a line that suddenly only had one customer.  I quickly jumped out of my line, since the lady in front of me had two giant carts filled with food, in back of the guy with just three items. 

Well just as the cashier is ringing up the customer in front of me the cash register stalls.  I have never seen a cash register lock up and just not work.  I have been witness to many a computer crash however never a cash register crash.  Well there is a first time for everything.  After about five minutes of fiddling with the damn thing he says that he will open up at a new station.  The two of us meander to the new cash register, wait for him to get logged in, and then proceed to get checked out. 

The lady who had been in front of me with two giant grocery carts full of food was long gone.  In fact when I finally reached the parking lot to find my car she was already driving off in her Lexus meaning that she had finished checking out long before me since she had enough time to load all of her groceries into her car. 

There are those times, when I am not in a hurry, that I simply enjoy the process of discovering what new items are at Trader Joes, I leisurely get in line and when I am not in a hurry it seems that the lines move much faster.  It’s the old lesson that apparently I have not fully embraced:  When I can let go of my attachment as to how things ought to be life moves much easier.  When I get invested in a particular result it seems that I make the process more difficult for myself.