SINGAPORE: A netizen was upset after seeing a middle-aged man hold the door open to an ice cream display freezer for an unusually long period at a grocery store, which resulted in the melting and softening of the tubs in the front of the freezer.

“Saw this uncle at Eastpoint NTUC open the freezer to stare at the ice cream for a good 5-8 minutes. I don’t understand why he can’t just look at the ice cream through the glass.

He even digs all the way to the back to get frozen ice cream. When it was my turn to get ice cream, all the ones in the front were soft and melted already,” Ms Catherine Ang Seow Leng wrote on the COMPLAINT SINGAPORE Facebook page on Tuesday (July 11).

As everyone probably knows by experience, melting and re-freezing ice cream changes its consistency, making it less enjoyable to eat. Melting causes the ice cream to lose the air that gets incorporated during churning. When frozen again, the resulting mass gets denser and harder to scoop, and truthfully, not as nearly delicious.

Ms Catherine added that the uncle’s behaviour is “Very inconsiderate.”

“If you won’t do this to your freezer at home, why would you do it in public?? Please think for others, no one wants to buy melted ice cream,” she wrote.

Based on the number of comments and shares, her post struck a nerve with other netizens as well.

However, netizens also raised a few points of their own.

“Agree. Dislike people like this. But also, the sticker on fridge window is so big it is covering the bottom rack. Don’t open fridge also difficult to choose,” one wrote.

“Some elderly thinking processes are slow and has Presbyopia, commonly known as ‘lao hua’ where the eyes loses the ability to focus at near objects,” another chimed in.

“Sometimes people open the freezer to look at the nutritional content and ingredient list at the back of the packaging before deciding whether to buy,” a commenter opined.

One netizen told the post author she could also talk to the uncle or the store staff.

The Independent Singapore has reached out to Ms Catherine and NTUC Fairprice.

Ms Catherine told us that she would like to remind the public “to be considerate when grocery shopping. Don’t press on fruits, don’t leave frozen foods out, don’t leave fridge doors open for too long. Treat the space as how you would at home.” /TISG

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