Security at Tullamarine cleared, my husband and I hit the newsagent. He lined up to pay for a magazine. Three minutes later, he hadn’t moved.
What was taking so long? I put down Tatler and went to see. Turned out the global IT outage of July 19 was kicking off. The shop couldn’t process payments.
My husband was bemused. The dude in front was apoplectic. Bad behaviour is everywhere - have we lost the art of civil behaviour? Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto “What do you mean, I can’t pay? Stuff the card then, I’ve got cash,” Angry Man told the shop assistant, whose training probably hadn’t included handling a worldwide tech meltdown.
Sorry, she said. I won’t be able to record the transaction or give a receipt. It was like Angry Man had heard his mum cleared out all his old stuff from the garage, including the K Tel record selector.
He abandoned his inside voice. “What? That makes no sense! F---ing ridiculous. What country is this?” Chris and I watched him storm righteously off.
We were like, “woah, it’s not the assistant’s fault, cool your jets you angry ant!” Then we got to the Virgin Lounge and nobody’s entry pass could be scanned. Loading The idea of missing out on free salty snacks made me so unhappy I brandished my phone and sense of entitlement and tried jumping the queue and just walking on in. In my mind, it was like Kristen Wiig trying to switch plane seats in Bridesmaids .
Kinda charming and funny. Nah. As a sometime judge of jerk behavio.
