Aislefret

aislefret (n.) — EYE-ul-fret. The condition that begins at the moment of committing to one checkout queue and lasts until you have paid, characterised by continuous sideways assessment of every other queue in the shop.

From aisle, and fret, in its old sense of a thing that wears away at a surface by rubbing. The word describes a wearing rather than a panic: nobody has ever been distressed by aislefret, and nobody has ever entirely enjoyed a queue since learning the word.

The classic form has three stages. First, the choosing, conducted at speed and on evidence you have no time to read: trolley depth, the age of the person at the front, whether that till light is on or merely warm. Second, the doubt, which arrives the moment the queue beside you moves. Third, the reckoning, in which the person who was behind you at the door is served first and does not look back, and you have to decide what kind of person you are going to be about it.

Usage: He suffered a mild aislefret, switched queues once, and finished eleven places behind the man he had been standing next to at the beginning, who by then had gone home.