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It seems like (and this is constant, I can recall this dozens of times) I will show up somewhere be it a checkout line, return line, get gas, go into a store come out and the place is all the sudden packed when it was dead empty when I got there. It's weird.

Today I was returning some stuff at a big box hardware store and the place was dead. We walked up right to counter and the guy immediately starting helping us. We had to wait for a manager to approve the return and between that call the made and us leaving (like 2 or 3 mins) a line of 20 people appeared behind us. It went from just us to 20 people. I counted. This happens all the time. Does this happen to anyone else or some other kind of strange shit with the NPCs? I'll get gas and not a single pump is in use and then when I leave there is a line of cars waiting for a pump. I'll go to the self check out at the grocery store and all of the sudden a line appears. Did the whole fucking store decide to checkout at the exact same time?

I have no explanation for it.

It seems like (and this is constant, I can recall this dozens of times) I will show up somewhere be it a checkout line, return line, get gas, go into a store come out and the place is all the sudden packed when it was dead empty when I got there. It's weird. Today I was returning some stuff at a big box hardware store and the place was dead. We walked up right to counter and the guy immediately starting helping us. We had to wait for a manager to approve the return and between that call the made and us leaving (like 2 or 3 mins) a line of 20 people appeared behind us. It went from just us to 20 people. I counted. This happens all the time. Does this happen to anyone else or some other kind of strange shit with the NPCs? I'll get gas and not a single pump is in use and then when I leave there is a line of cars waiting for a pump. I'll go to the self check out at the grocery store and all of the sudden a line appears. Did the whole fucking store decide to checkout at the exact same time? I have no explanation for it.

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[–] • 4 pts

All the time. It seems to happen to a lot of people. I expect that there are many factors that lead to it occurring for most of us that can explain it. From the region you live in down to the timing on traffic lights, the types of businesses in the area and their distances from each other, as well as locations of gas stations and the distance to interstate exits.

Have you ever seen the movie "Truman Show"? That messed with a lot of people at the time because it played off of that "nobody is around until I show up as if everyone else only exists to populate my world and I'm the only one that's real".

[–] • 1 pt

I lived near a popular beach and would watch the traffic come in on a one way street day in and day out. You could separate out the types of people that would show up during the course of the day based on what time they came to the beach. Parking in the area was always a shit show, the smart well off responsible types would come in the morning eager to get parking. Then as the day would go on, the crowd just got darker and darker, at about 4-5pm the people pulling in would usually be firing shots at some point soon after. I feel like this phenomenon is similar, but less identifiable because it wasn't linearly observable like on the single one way street.