It's a convenience store. It's supposed to be convenient.

I hold that this convenience not only pertains to being able to purchase staple items like fake Slurpees and minty chewing tobacco without going through the rigmarole of steering a shopping cart with a bum wheel. It also pertains to the notion that the actual exchange of cash for purchaseable items should, likewise, be quick and convenient.

In that paradigm, consider the cashier's station as a shrine, one which you pay your penance to very, very quickly. The god of this shrine repays you in heaven for your promptness. It's an altar to convenience. Because it's a convenience store.

So, darling, the point of this preamble is this: Don't dally at the point of worship.

Meaning, in your specific case, ma'am, don't blockade your front space in the cashier line, and then go retrieve as many bargain-brand, artificially-colored, highly-sweetened corn syrup candies and cheap beers as you can.

Then, while at the cashier's spot, don't get into an argument with your friend over what you have and don't have to get. It will befuddle the cashier, and possibly antagonize the person waiting behind you. This is no time for high-spirited debate about just how many feet of licorice rope you require for whatever activities you have planned for the evening. You need no more than three feet. I promise. Whatever it is. Three feet, max.

Then, and for some reason I consider this key, perhaps because it's so incomprehensible: Don't proceed to comparison-shop every single impulse-buy-oriented item at the cashier stand itself, including but not limited to cigarette lighters, individually-wrapped bubblegum, trading cards, nail clippers, and yet more candies. For this point-of-purchase inspiration only results in more hypotheses and postulations with your shopping companion.

Please, girls, work out the worst-case scenarios in advance. Decide your issues at home.You are not filling out a goddamn loan application. You are at a convenience store. You are supposed to hit it and quit it, much like your paramours who are probably waiting for you to come home with your bounty of candy and gum, which you may yet release to them once you and your shopping companion decide whether to hand it to them or toss it to them. Take the road more travelled in this case, toots. Whatever it is.

Just figure it all out before you get to the counter.

(Sigh.)

Also: Paying in all pennies, while quaint and thorough, may be construed as time-intensive by the person in fucking line behind you.