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When we’re growing up, we all have slightly different experiences. Many of these are based on our parents’ preferences, lifestyles, parenting styles, income, and living situation – as well as broader things like culture, religion and societal expectations. What your family did on an average Sunday may look very different to your neighbours’ experiences, your future partner’s upbringing, or even the life that you provide for your kids too.

So it goes without saying that while some kids stayed at home playing with one parent on a weekend while the other parent did the grocery shopping, this was by no means a universal experience. In some families, the parents and kids all went to the grocery store, completing the weekly shop as a family, while others were in wholly different living situations entirely. None of these are wrong, they’re all just different ways of being, all with pros and cons of their own.

For the boyfriend of the woman in this story, big family grocery store trips had never been more of an issue than on this one particular day, when he just wanted to get a couple of things from the store. Unfortunately though, a large family had the same idea.

Read on to find out what happened.

Family taking up all the space, refuse to let anyone else in

My boyfriend just got home from the supermarket – and before he went, he’d asked if there was anything I’d like.

I was craving some croissants so that’s what I asked for.

My boyfriend got to the meat aisle first, and found that not only was there a big family taking up the whole section he wanted to get to, but there was already someone else waiting too.

His ‘excuse me’ was wasted, and they seemed to be moving slower and slower.

Let’s see how her boyfriend dealt with the situation.

After waiting for longer than necessary, he decided to get the other things he came for.

When he got back they were still there, so he waited a little longer and of course politely let the other person who was still there go first.

Then he only had my croissants to get.

There weren’t any left in the bread section, but he knew they sometimes had a rack of them at the front.

But his run-ins with the big family weren’t over yet.

As he got there he saw the same family, still spreading out taking up a large section of the aisle, blocking anyone else from getting past.

So he went around the other way as he got to the shelf they took the last bag of croissants.

Frustrated and not wanting to go the long way he squeezed past, snagging the croissants as he walked by and to the checkout.

Normally I wouldn’t agree with a trolley snatching breech of supermarket etiquette, but I think in this case he was justified.

She’s definitely right – this would normally be totally against supermarket etiquette.

But this family had been annoying and held him up so much, it’s understandable that he wanted to get some petty revenge.

And more than that, he wanted to fulfil his girlfriend’s wish – and there’s something very sweet in that.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.

This person could not believe that the family were so rude.

While others were impressed with the fellow shoppers’ patience.

Meanwhile, this Redditor thought he sounded like a great boyfriend.

If you really must insist on taking an entire family to the supermarket, you need to learn some etiquette yourself. It’s fine if everyone is well behaved and keeping to themselves, and you’re moving through the shop. But when there are lots of you and you’re stationary, holding everyone else up while blocking the aisle, that’s a problem.

Because what some people don’t seem to comprehend is that there are other folk there too, and they have places to be, things to purchase, and their own demands on their time – and you holding them up for twenty minutes while your entire family ponder over which cut of beef to buy is annoying to say the least.

And sure, it’s not great manners to steal something out of someone else’s shopping cart. But they hadn’t paid for it at least, and sometimes things aren’t super fair. The truth is, in this case he did good – but don’t do it again.