Quicker, faster... Better?

Man and woman are worlds apart, for all it matters we could be completely different species. I have glanced on our differences before but have noticed a few more in recent weeks. The first being at the supermarket, there are the obvious differences that always occur between us when any kind of shopping is involved, woman will go around comparing different items, checking prices and quality, value for money and brand whilst man will just throw the first thing he comes to that looks vaguely like what he came in for into his basket.

But the latest addition to the everyday supermarket which I am sure you will have come across is the self service checkout. Now before this arrived I would always walk up and down the rows of tills with my shopping trying to find the till with the shortest queue in order to save time and get out as quickly as possible. Now however I disregard all the other tills, queue or no queue and always head straight for the self service till even if it means standing in line and waiting for five minutes. And for the most part I will be waiting with other men. I will have walked past bored cashiers twiddling their thumbs, slouched over their tills looking at me, pleading with me to use their till but no, I want to do it myself. I want to scan my own items and put them in my bag, not because I get maybe 5% of my shopping bill or any other kind of monetary incentive but because it’s a challenge. I want to see how quickly I can get my shopping scanned through and bagged. Can I beat my last visit? Can I beat the man on the self service checkout opposite me? Competition is a very strong driving force amongst men. I can be stood their scanning my items with a wry smile on face as I know I’m beating the man next to me and as I hear a computerised voice from his till saying “Unexpected item in the bagging area” I punch the air triumphantly knowing he now has to wait for assistance from a spotty faced teenager before progressing. I will pay and have my bag in hand walking towards the door, casually glancing over my shoulder to see my competition chastising himself on buying the family sized box of cornflakes that slowed him down and inevitably lost him the race. I am now left looking for the winner’s podium to stand aloft, hand on clubcard as the national anthem is played over the tanoy.

Women on the other hand don’t do this; Women will park their trolley at the first available checkout and start chatting to whoever may be nearby. Woman will be on first name terms with the cashier, will know all about their holiday to Spain, what their eldest has been getting up to and all the latest gossip. She will bag her groceries methodically into her numerous bags for life, with all the frozen bits in one bag, all the tins equally dispersed amongst the others so as not to get one particularly heavy bag and you’ll never find the eggs scrambled at the bottom of one of her bags or the French loaf broken in half. She will then open the biggest purse known to woman or man and produce a vast array of collected coupons from various magazines and newspapers, all the while still merrily chatting with Margaret on Checkout seventeen. The unloading, scanning, bagging and paying of items for woman will take almost as long as the actual shopping took. In the meantime man is outside, in his car and turning into the petrol station and it is here we find the second observational difference between man and woman.

Man will pull into the petrol station, choose to pay at the pump and then begin to fill the tank. Man will now strive to fill the tank and end on an even pound, not a penny under or a penny above but a round pound. The pump will automatically disengage as the tank fills and man will glance up at the cost, now on very rare occasions it will have filled and rounded off to precisely on the pound, but please understand this is extraordinarily rare and should it ever happen man must do a little jig in the petrol station before going to buy a lottery ticket. On every other occasion man will now stand at the pump, reposition the nozzle slightly and continue to squeeze a few more drops of petrol into the tank to reach that golden .00. Inching closer and closer, mustn’t go over must get it exact.

Now when woman pulls into the petrol station she will drive up to the pump, get out, walk round to the nozzles, walk back to the car, get back in, reverse out and pull back into a pump on the same side as the filling cap, get back out, walk back round to the nozzles, check she has picked up unleaded, try to remember if her car takes unleaded, ring her partner to ask him what fuel it takes, get shouted at by the cashier for using her mobile phone on a forecourt, begin to fill the car, get frustrated with the pump because it keeps shutting off every few seconds, swear as the tank over fills and she gets petrol on her new shoes, walk to the cashier with whom she is not on first name terms with and is scowling at her, pay for the petrol before returning to the car acknowledging the cars queuing up behind her, get in, reapply some make up, adjust her seating position, put her seatbelt on, take her seat belt off, reach onto the back seat for a sneaky bit of chocolate from the shopping, glance up at the angry waiting drivers behind her inching ever closer, put her seat belt back on, take it back off again, get out of the car walk around to the fuel flap, close it and retrieve her keys, get back in the car, put her seatbelt back on before finally driving off.


So whilst men are charging through life, competing with everything and anything they can, never stopping to breathe in a moment or contemplate the hush of a whisper and thinking the quicker they can do something the better, woman will be gliding through life, unrestricted by the chains of competition and time, pausing to cherish the moment and listening to every word all the time thinking there are some things man needs to take longer over.