House of Burgess

So I'm in line at Safeway buying some things for dinner with my girlfriend Ash and we're ready to check out. The only two registers open in the entire store are the express lanes and they are jam-packed. The line for the further one from us extends clear into the aisle across the way from the lane. The one closest to us makes a sharp turn at a barrel of discounted items towards us. We post up behind a nervous looking man holding a pair of soup cans close to his chest. As we take our place in line I see a woman coming from the opposite direction break through the longer line and takes her position on the other side of the soup man, making the line "Y" shape. As she approaches I make sure to look her in the eye and I figure we have an unspoken understanding that I was there first and will be subsequently cutting in front of her, which I do, with no protest--from her anyway.
At this point a petite, bespectacled woman in the other line who has an entire cart-full of apple juice containers turns to the woman behind us and says, "Did they just cut in front of you?" And before she could answer the bespectacled woman addresses us and says the same thing. I then inform her that no, in fact, we did not. She mumbles that we did. At this point I offer the woman behind us to cut us in line if it's so important to her. Once again, before the woman I'm actually talking to can respond the nosy woman says, "oh no, she's fine."

At this point in the conversation I'd like to point out that:
a) I'm pretty sure these two women don't know each other
b) The woman behind us probably just got caught up in the madness of her new "friend"
and most importantly...
c) If someone offers you a way out of something and you say "no" you have automatically lost the right to complain about it.

Then, to my utter shock and amazement they CONTINUE to talk to each other about us "cutting" her loudly. After a few seconds of this, I turned around and offered my place in line again. They once again refuse. "You're obviously still upset about it," says Ash to which the bespectacled woman replies "We were just chit-chatting". Yeah right. After this we walk behind them and force them in front of us. The conversation between the two stops and we all stand uncomfortably around as the line creeps forward for the rest of the time.
The thing that bothered me most about all this is if she had asked us if she could get in front of us, even and especially if we had cut her, which we didn't, I would have been more than happy to let her go. She had like three things to our five and I couldn't care less. It just seems me that some people are looking for a situation where they can be victim even if it's imaginary and even if it's happening to someone else and even after they are offered a way out.
I guess some of us need the "other" pushing against them at all times, even if it's not real, to feel normal.