16. Look At Ease In A Queue
Buena Vista PicturesLet's face it: there are a few things more terrifying than stepping to the front of an ever-expanding queue, from which you can hear titters and angry complaints from your impatient peers in-line. With all eyes about to descend on you as you make your way to the counter / booth / ATM, suddenly all your nerves begin to scream at the thought of all the things that could potentially go wrong during this once-harmless chore, and render you nothing but a disgrace to your fellow civilians. In your own mind, you're about to be judged for EVERYTHING that happens as a result of your existence in this space. If the cashier needs to do something particularly tricky, you're holding up a line of potentially highly-important people, and are hated. If the process takes longer than thirty seconds to complete, a tiny chorus of tuts and mutters will undoubtedly attack your ears like angry bees. It's enough to drive a Brit insane with paranoia, and this is why we botch transactions and consumer interactions so dazzlingly: we're just so terrified of causing a fuss that we'd rather abandon getting lunch for the day and just forget the whole thing.
15. Choose Between Two Items Of Clothing When Shopping
NBCTime for the quintessential past-time of the Great Western Weekend: making the same circuits of shopping malls and retail parks as we attempt to forget the stresses of the past week through the wonders of "retail therapy". The snag here is that even when attempting to treat ourselves through the consumption of desired goods, we are obligated to make every choice we make as agonising as possible. Does the following scenario sound in any way familiar? "I may have given myself free rein to spend this £40 in any way I see fit, but the two shirts which most take my fancy are both £25 each. Spending £50 in one fell swoop is simply out of the question, but I simply can't see myself taking home one without the other." 99% of the time, cases like these end up with both items of clothing returned to the racks from whence they came, and we retreat to the passive past-time of aimlessly mooching without actually spending a single penny.