15 individual gift cards? Really?

[rerant]

It was rude in that she had to sit there and fiddle with fifteen individual envelopes. She obviously knew she was going to that store, and it would have been much quicker for her to get all the cards out of the envelopes before she got there so she could hand them all to the cashier in one lump.

I agree with this.
When I was at IKEA the gift cards came on these little bits of cardboard that would fold into a makeshift envelope with the cards held on with sticky-tack stuff.
People would never remove the cards from the envelopes until they were ready to pay and some people would have fistfulls of them and it would take forever.

Paying with a lot of gift cards is not bad at all, but when you extend the process by insisting on taking your sweet time removing the cards from their respective packaging that's when you're bordering on rude due to inconsideration.

[Auto]

Inconsiderate, perhaps. Rude, no.

Look, it's annoying as hell to be standing behind someone who is making a big purchase with change and small bills.

Yes, the customer could have gone to a bank and exchanged small bills for large one.

But then the folks standing in that line would have had to wait while the bank teller counted and recounted 50 singles before handing over a $50 bill.

When you've got a lot of small bills or small denomination gift cards, somebody somewhere is likely to get inconvenienced when you use them to pay.

That's life.

I'm not going to NOT buy something because how I choose to pay might annoy some stranger standing behind me in line.

And if that stranger is engaging in a lot of eye-rolling and loud sighing and harumpfing and murmuring under his breath, I just might slow things down even more.

[wanderingjoe72]

I go with the inconsiderate part. That applies to all forms of payment. If you are paying cash, have it out, paying by check fill out as much as you can, cards, have em out. It is rude to not be ready to complete a transaction when others are waiting.

I have done a transaction with a large number of gift cards though. Work is nice and give out gift cards for various things. We had over $600 to Home Depot and went to buy a new stove. Granted we did try to get as many $100 cards as we could, but still had a fair amount of $25s. The sales rep took us up to an open register and we had them in order by amount. The cashier swiped them all through and we were out. We did warn a couple of people that got in line behind us as to what we were doing and they had no problem stepping over to another line.