queuing for what?

so i’m in Sainsburys Central along with 1000 other people buying sandwiches, salads or "be good to yourself" carbohydrate and preservative laden stodge. I usually pay at the cigarette counter as I only have one item and I usually pay cash. Today there is a long queue at the cigarette counter and hardly anyone at the normal tills. why? is there something wrong with the normal tills, should I join the queue for the cigarette counter?

I eventually take the plunge and go for the normal tills – all goes without a hitch and within minutes i’m walking back up the road thinking why didn’t those people just go for the normal tills rather than stand in that long queue? Then it dawned on me – maybe they were buying cigarettes!

As a life-long self-righteous non-smoker it honestly didn’t occur to me that you might use the cigarette counter for anything other than avoiding the checkouts 🙂