Free Stuff

Yesterday I went on a foray for cat food. I steeled myself and started at Trader Joe's. This is always a trial. I have never been there when it was comfortable. Possibly at the moment it opens or closes it might actually be a pleasant experience. Otherwise it's an exercise in patience and restraint. The urge to thin the crowd with a machete is strong. Don't get me wrong, I like Trader Joe's. They've got some good stuff there but the space is just too small. This is New York City for goodness sake. We need some wide aisles. On occasion I am willing to brave the melee to buy cat food and a few other things. But yesterday they had no cat food or dog food for that matter. I didn't discover this until I'd already shopped for some other things. I toyed briefly with the idea of buying them but as both lines snaked all the way to the other end of the store I just couldn't do it. I was a good girl and put all my items back where they belonged and then got the heck out of there.

I moved on to the Whole Foods. They've got crowds too but the store is big enough that I don't have the constant urge to run screaming into the night. I bought the cat food and some other stuff and went home. When I got here I put my groceries away, and discovered that I had some extra stuff. Some mesclun mix, a head of garlic, a package of tomatoes, some carrots, and a bar of soap. At first I thought that maybe someone had put them in my basket when I had left it on its own. But I didn't remember seeing them as I stood on line or on the screen as she was ringing. Then I checked my receipt. Not there, I hadn't paid for them. So they must have been in the bag already when the cashier put my items in. Nice for me but very sad for the person who actually bought the stuff. Since they were in the bag they must have been rung up already. What a bummer to get home and discover you were missing things, things you'd paid for. And what about the cashier? Did she really not notice them in the bag or did she have some sort of brain spasm to make her think she'd rung them up for me?