There was a thread about this that I saw asking if the products allowed to be purchased should be limited. I don't have an answer for that.
I was in line the other day at a grocery store behind a young woman who was obviously shopping for a family and had piled up a tab of about $251.00. She was alone. This all fit into one cart.
It turned out that she was $6.41 short and she had absolutely no other cash with her except the government card. She went through the 5 stages of loss in about one second and said, "Well, we just have to put something back." She was obviously accustomed to not getting all of what she wanted.
As she surveyed the items, now bagged and in another cart, it was obvious that she was getting stumped by the decision. I had watched with little interest some of the items getting rung up. As I am older and don't buy Little Debbies too much or Lunchables and so on, it seemed like she had purchased most of the items for kids and I remember thinking that it looked like food for little boys.
Some of that food was not what I would call staples, but it was food that would make her kids smile. Is there a value for this? Is it something we need to limit?
Anyway, the whole process of being $6.41 short, the notification from the check out clerk, her reaction and my observation had covered maybe 5 seconds, maybe less, and I was standing in line behind her holding my credit card and the one item I had to check out. I asked if I could run the balance on my card. The clerk said, "yes", and I swiped my card.
It was nothing.
To her, $6.41 was the desserts for her boys lunches or the after school snacks or the hot dogs at the grill or some other event that she had planned for the week and the smiles that go with them. It was not groceries she was "putting back". It was smiles. $6.41 was the difference between being happy and being sad.
Can money buy happiness? I'll tell you this: $6.41 made me feel like Superman.
I was in line the other day at a grocery store behind a young woman who was obviously shopping for a family and had piled up a tab of about $251.00. She was alone. This all fit into one cart.
It turned out that she was $6.41 short and she had absolutely no other cash with her except the government card. She went through the 5 stages of loss in about one second and said, "Well, we just have to put something back." She was obviously accustomed to not getting all of what she wanted.
As she surveyed the items, now bagged and in another cart, it was obvious that she was getting stumped by the decision. I had watched with little interest some of the items getting rung up. As I am older and don't buy Little Debbies too much or Lunchables and so on, it seemed like she had purchased most of the items for kids and I remember thinking that it looked like food for little boys.
Some of that food was not what I would call staples, but it was food that would make her kids smile. Is there a value for this? Is it something we need to limit?
Anyway, the whole process of being $6.41 short, the notification from the check out clerk, her reaction and my observation had covered maybe 5 seconds, maybe less, and I was standing in line behind her holding my credit card and the one item I had to check out. I asked if I could run the balance on my card. The clerk said, "yes", and I swiped my card.
It was nothing.
To her, $6.41 was the desserts for her boys lunches or the after school snacks or the hot dogs at the grill or some other event that she had planned for the week and the smiles that go with them. It was not groceries she was "putting back". It was smiles. $6.41 was the difference between being happy and being sad.
Can money buy happiness? I'll tell you this: $6.41 made me feel like Superman.
