Here's my theory -- the best way to learn about Thai people's behaviours is to go to Tesco Lotus.
We might (pretend to) be well-educated, compassionate, polite and reasonable on social media as we have a certain image to maintain, yet when at Tesco, our ugly side comes out. This is understandable -- most of us go grocery shopping alone, so we know we're not being judged, at least not by someone we know.
I was recently standing in the express checkout lane, with a huge sign above my head saying "10 items or fewer". In that painfully long line, most people had just a few items in their basket, except for the lady in front of me, who was tsk-ing impatiently, her hands clenched angrily on the handle bar of the trolley. In that trolley, there were around 20 items.
Not the confrontational type, I turned to my five-year-old and asked him, "Sweetie, I know you're so good at reading. Can you read the sign out loud to me?" He did, proud to show off his Jolly Phonics skills. When he finished reading, he asked me, "Why can't we have more than 10 items?"
Bingo. I said, loud enough for people in those two express lanes to hear, "Because these are express lanes for people with just a few items. If you have more than 10, you have to use the regular lanes. We should respect the rules. Now, let's count how many we have in our basket."
The lady in front of me looked increasingly angry. I loved it. I kept at my little game, pretending to be teaching my son maths and manners. "We have seven items in our basket. Can we be in this lane? What if we had more than 10? What should we do?"
The lady sighed heavily and pushed her trolley out of the lane, looking as enraged as one of those red Angry Birds. I secretly high-fived my son. Mission completed!
Alas, she left my lane only to join the adjacent express lane. At that point, I decided to ignore her and her evil glare. Some people just cannot be taught.
Let me explain this in case you are too hiso to shop at Tesco. In regular lanes, you just queue up normally. For express lanes, with two or three cashiers in each, you form a snake-line queue. If you don't know what a snake-line queue is, for the love of God, don't go grocery shopping and don't use public toilets.
But some Thai customers use a different system -- the "me first" system. They jump to whatever cashier is available, regardless of the number of people in front of them. "Look, there's no line at that cashier!" a girl said to her boyfriend, happily squeezing through the lane to reach that cashier with the same pride as Rocky Balboa winning the World Heavyweight Championship.
Down in the parking lot, I saw perfectly normal people parking in the disabled parking spaces, men parking in the women's zone and cars parked right next to the "no parking" sign. Going grocery shopping is obviously an apocalyptic event for some, a time when they ignore all the rules for the sake of their survival.
And what I realised was my ugly side also came out at Tesco -- I can be really judgmental. Well, deal with it.