Softly clinging to the carpet and embedded in the hols and grooves of a rubber mat that was lying on the floor, the nails were quite difficult to pick up and the task looked like it would be quite time consuming, and with the store about to open time wasn't something there was a lot of. This is where critical thinking came into play: rather than simply dealing with the issue in the first way that came to mind -- i.e. laboriously picking up each individual nail, needing to pick some out of small spaces with some sort of tweezers -- this author recalled the large magnets sold as novelties at the other end of the store. One slow pass of the magnet over the area of the spill and all of the nails were picked up, saving a lot of time and effort. Figuring out how to do this took some critical thinking, albeit not of the highest order -- the various facts of the...

A moment of critical thinking is almost always worthwhile, because such thinking tends to make up for the time spent on it. More effective decisions lead to better outcomes, and that's what critical thinking is all about.
References

Ennis, R. (2011). Critical thinking defintion, instruction, and assessment. Accessed 11 October 2011. www.criticalthinking.net

FCT. (2011). Defining critical thinking. Foundation for Critical Thinking. Accessed 11 October 2011. www.criticalthinking.org/pages/defining-critical-thinking/766