Ditherers

To dither is to pause unnecessarily in a situation where others would prefer you rushed.

The above definition wasn't taken from a dictionary, though I can see why one might assume so. I wrote it myself. Impressed? You should be. My mother is very intolerant of these people who dither, people otherwise refered to in the Pattie household as 'ditherers'. It's those people who take their sweet time comparing tuna brands in the supermarket whilst blocking you and three other trolleys from briskly browsing the aisles and selecting anything you can grab at that might get eaten. It's these people who spend their time folding napkins dilligently and neatly as opposed to setting out the acutal cutlery at an event. It's these people who get in the way, and sometimes walk funny.

I have at times found myself dithering. Working as a checkout chick, it's easy to dither. There's a hole in a bag of icing sugar and you're just not switched on today. So instead of doing the normal thing and swooping it into a bag and calling a grocery boy over the intercom to come and replace it, you find that you're instead watching the sugar pour and thinking about how the hole might've got there to start with. Yes. You're dithering. You realise this and snap out of it, but it's already too late. You dithered, and the customer saw you dither.

What would your mother say?