Everyone once in a while, you meet someone who casually, in the space of a few moments, is able to make you despise humanity and hope that someday the cockroaches will create a more civil society.

The scene: Costco just before closing, in a cattle call line for the cafeteria. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure, the food is cheap, good, plentiful and 90% pizza grease; before you can have any, though, you have to stand in a long line with people whose shopping carts contain the gross annual exports of Shandong province. These carts are like trucks at the tollbooth, making it extremely hard to judge which line is longer. You’ll almost certainly be wrong, so the right strategy is to pick one and try not to be in a hurry.

I’m standing in a line that ends in two different registers, longish when I get there. It’s much shorter when some guy arrives behind me, cherubic tyke in tow, and we have the following conversation:

Some guy: Which line are you in?

Me: I’m in the line.

Some guy: It looks like there are two lines here.

Me: There was a single line when I got here.

Some guy: Well (indicating the yellow stripe painted on the floor, on which I am standing), there are two lines.

Me: I thought the social purpose of lines was to allow the people who are waiting the longest to be served first. Do you intend to get in front of me? Because the only reason you could ask me which line I’m in, is so you’d have a chance to get lucky.

Some guy: No, you should just pick one.

Me: I have. (turning back around, still standing on the yellow line)

Thanks to the magic of camphones, I can share with you the picture of the man who does so much, in his breathtakingly efficient and negligent way, to ensure that existence remains nasty and brutish, if not short. Should you see him on the Beltway, I have not the slightest doubt that he’s the type to cut you off in traffic, so drive defensively.