Every time I stand in a line, I am reminded why I don’t like people.

I know what you’re thinking – You don’t like people? What kind of sociopath monster are you? Well, I like people in – in the abstract. But up close and personal, eh, not so much. Except you. I like you.

At any rate, I try and avoid lines like some people avoid the dentist’s office. The main reason is that I’m a horrible judge of which line is the best one to get in.

There could be two lines open at the grocery store.

Line A has 20 people in it, each of them with a full shopping cart.

Line B has two people in it. One who is almost done checking out and another, a woman (or it could be a guy, it wouldn’t matter) who has just one item.

Well, most people would get in Line B and would complete their purchase within 20 seconds flat.

If I got in Line B, the woman in front of me would:

• Dig through her purse, pockets and portable expanding file folder for 10 minutes searching for a coupon
• The coupon would be expired
• The woman would pay in pennies
• Half the pennies would be rejected because they were from various countries I’ve never heard of
• The woman, short on cash, would then have to go out to her car in search of more money. And of course the cashier can’t put the sale on hold or anything which might move things along
• The woman would have locked her keys in the car and would then have to ask others for change, a process which takes all of about 14 hours.

In other words, I don’t like lines.

So, when these new Redbox DVD vending machines started popping up around my neighborhood recently, I wanted nothing to do with them. Resistance was tough because they offer new movie rentals for $1 a night. Considering how much the big name rental chains charge these days, that’s a great deal!

Of course when you have a great product idea, you’re going to draw lines. And these DVD boxes attract people like cow patties attract flies.

Usually, I drive right past the long lines of miserable looking people.

Then Wednesday came.

Turns out that while I COULD resist the lure of one dollar rentals, I could NOT resist the lure of a FREE rental. Of course, if I did the math and figured out how much time I would spend waiting in line to both get the movie and then again to return it, I would realize that I was doing math and I hate math.

I also would’ve realized that I was spending far more than a dollar’s worth of time in line.

Yet, there I was on Wednesday, selling my soul for a dollar.

Find out what happened, in part two.

Note: I apologize for the lack of timely commenting and sporadic updating schedule of late. I’ve been working on launching a site with Sean Platt which we will be talking about more in the weeks to come. Please keep leaving comments and I’ll get to them all as quickly as I’m able.

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