Cookie story

This actually did happen to a real person, and the real person was me. 
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I had gone to catch a train. 
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This was April 1976, in Cambridge, U.K. 
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I was a bit early for the train. 
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I'd gotten the time of the train wrong.
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I went to get myself a newspaper to do the crossword, and a cup of coffee and a packet of cookies. 
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I went and sat at a table.
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I want you to picture the scene. 
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It's very important that you get this very clear in your mind.
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Here's the table, newspaper, cup of coffee, packet of cookies. 
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There's a guy sitting opposite me, perfectly ordinary-looking guy wearing a business suit, carrying a briefcase.
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It didn't look like he was going to do anything weird. 
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What he did was this: he suddenly leaned across, picked up the packet of cookies, tore it open, took one out, and ate it.
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Now this, I have to say, is the sort of thing the British are very bad at dealing with. 
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There's nothing in our background, upbringing, or education that teaches you how to deal with someone who in broad daylight has just stolen your cookie
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You know what would happen if this had been South Central Los Angeles. 
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There would have very quickly been gunfire, helicopters coming in, CNN, you know. . . 
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But in the end, I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do: 
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I ignored it. 
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And I stared at the newspaper, took a sip of coffee, tried to do a clue in the newspaper, couldn't do anything, and thought, what am I going to do?
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In the end I thought, nothing for it, 
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I'll just have to go for it, and I tried very hard not to notice the fact that the packet was already mysteriously opened. 
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I took out a cookie for myself. 
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I thought, that settled him. 
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But it hadn't because a moment or two later he did it again. 
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He took another cookie.
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Having not mentioned it the first time, it was somehow even harder to raise the subject the second time around. 
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"Excuse me, I couldn't help but notice . . ." I mean, it doesn't really work.
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We went through the whole packet like this. 
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When I say the whole packet, I mean there were only about eight cookies, but it felt like a lifetime. 
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He took one, I took one, he took one, I took one. 
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Finally, when we got to the end, he stood up and walked away.
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Well, we exchanged meaningful looks, then he walked away, and I breathed a sigh of relief and sat back. 
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A moment or two later the train was coming in, so I tossed back the rest of my coffee, stood up, picked up the newspaper, and underneath the newspaper were my cookies.
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The thing I like particularly about this story is the sensation that somewhere in England there has been wandering around for the last quarter-century a perfectly ordinary guy who's had the same exact story, only he doesn't have the punch line.
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(Excerpted from "The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time" by Douglas Adams)