A Costco shopper says the man ahead of her in the checkout line tried to take her paper towels after she’d already refused his request to have them.
Posting as theaprilnoelle, she described shopping for a few items when he asked for the paper towels in her cart. His proposed arrangement: she’d go collect another pack, and he’d hold her spot in line. She said he was serious.
When she realized she’d forgotten something, he tried to take the towels himself.
“You can pick some more up since you’re leaving the line,” he told her, according to her account. Her response in the post: “Sir. No. WTAF?”
Other grocery-store accounts have described people treating someone else’s shopping as theirs to interfere with.
In a 2023 TikTok, Ted Pullin said a shopper refused to let him cut ahead with 2 items. Pullin then took spaghetti from the man’s cart and bought it himself, explaining that he wanted to keep the other shopper from having it.
A pandemic-era story submitted to Not Always Right described a man trying to take toilet paper from another shopper’s cart. After being called out, he left, then came back and tried again.
A South Carolina shopper alleged that a man rammed her with his cart, then shrugged when confronted.
The paper-towels request made keeping her place in line part of a deal she’d never accepted. Etiquette consultant Nick Leighton has a rule that applies directly: “Don’t shop out of other people’s carts.”
Miss Manners wrote in March 2026 that giving way to someone pushy feeds “the mistaken notion that etiquette always requires yielding. It does not.”