First time Whole Foods let me down.
Yesterday, after a long day at work, my wife and I headed over to Whole Foods to pick up our Turkey and a few other essentials for the upcoming holiday. You see Whole Foods is our favorite grocery store, we look forward to exploring it each time we go. We got our cart, and loaded up on the festive thanksgiving day items. It was a little bit crowded, but not as much as some days when we go on the weekend. That is almost expected, so we didn't mind. The gentleman at the butcher counter was very helpful, they only had two mild italian sausages left, so he threw in a mild turkey sausage for the sale price for us to get us up to the one pound we needed for the recipe. The nice lady at the deli counter helped us slice the paper thin prosciutto, and did it with a cheerful smile.
The last item on our list was a case of Peligrino sparkling water, my wife is addicted to the bubbles, so I found the last case up at the front of the store. My wife unloaded the cart while I was picking that up, and I took it and put it in the empty cart. I asked our cashier if she could scan it, and she said, "It looks heavy, no worries I'll just type it in for you, just put it in the cart." I thought that was nice of her, she finished up, we paid our big turkey day bill, and headed to the car. On the way out I asked my wife if she could scan the receipt and see how much the Peligrino came up to. Of course in the hustle and bustle of bagging up our groceries, the cashier forgot to add it in. By now I'm pulling out of the parking spot, and someone is anxiously waiting behind me for it. Parking spots are quite a rare find in the small lot Whole Foods owns.
So our quandry begins. What do we do? I don't want to circle the lot 5 more times to find another spot, it was an honest mistake, can I just leave and head home to get some dinner? I'm starving. I mean I don't want to steal, but these things happen. Just let it go right? Whole Foods is making a ton of money, they seem to be doing fine. What is another twenty bucks to their top executives paychecks? Not to mention the time it would take to fix this mess. I voted to leave, but my wife is a better person than me. She hopped out of the car, as I pulled off to the side and put my four way blinkers on. She came back about five minutes later, and I could tell she was disappointed.
She had to wait in the customer service line, okay no big deal, then she explained to the gentleman what had happened, and he acted begrudgingly and without any happiness. He looked up the code, swiped our card, and handed us the receipt. All without any real words of gratitude. In fact from my wife's description of it, he had a look of disdain. As if he was thinking "You made it out of the store with the water, why are you wasting my time making me charge you for it?" Now I'm not expecting a standing ovation or anything for doing our good deed for the day, but I am expecting the customer service representative to smile, and be extremely gracious about it.
So I do hope that if this happens to you, you'll take a deep breath, and do the right thing, even if it costs you a little more time or money, and even if it is against a big corporation. I truly believe if everyone in the world did this we would be living in peace. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
