A whiff of the mob

I have been in two different situations where you could say a "mob" formed or a small scale disturbance broke out. Both were in Afghanistan.

Tonight I got the faintest whiff of a mob here in America. Oh, not any kind of riot or criminal action... rather, it was at a Walgreens where shaped rubber bands were on sale. This particular fad has reached my children's school, and they were not immune.

So as we wandered the store, a Manager came up and asked if he could help me find anything. I replied "yes, we are looking for....what do you call them?" I asked my kids. "The rubber bands?" asked the Manager. Ha, yes, the rubber bands - he simply said "upfront where you see the kids..."
A rainy, non-descript weeknight and there was a rapidly forming crowd around a display table with packages of shaped rubber bands...there were queries as to various types of shapes, exclamations as to the price... I steered my little group up to the register and as the clerk rang me up, I mentioned how I would like to be the person who designed these things and that they had quite a crowd there. The clerk deadpanned at me "its like this everyday, all day".

Wow.

I thought things like this only happened at Christmas shopping time...