Bringing Beer Back

I knew that Four Beer Friday was coming up so I decided to pick up an 18-pack while I was grocery shopping. I used to buy beer at CostCo or Sam’s but really, they don’t have any better deals than the K.

In fact, the K had 18 cans for $14.99. Pretty good, right?

When I was checking out the sacker put my beer on the bottom of the cart. And when I started to push it away it fell over. I picked it up and she apologized. You think that little encounter would help me to keep the beer top of mind.

Instead, I threw all my groceries in the car, pushed the cart to the cart corral and drove off. I didn’t realize until that evening that I had left the beer there.

I knew some other Kroger shopper probably took my beer. I mean, why wouldn’t they? It’s not exactly like stealing if you don’t know who owns it. And it’s paid for. It’s kind of like finding cash on the street. You can’t go around asking, “Did you lose an 18-pack of beer?” anymore than you can say “Did you lose $100?”

But I went back the next day anyway, hoping that I could win them over with my sad story and southern charm. Whenever I want something here’s my strategy: I always first let the person know that I don’t expect them to help me. For instance, I would say, “I’m not sure if you can help me but I thought I’d try…” It immediately takes them off the defense. They suddenly want to help.

So I started with just that but before I could get to the part about how I just had a baby and my mind is frazzled, she said, “Oh, yeah. We know about that. They found it when they were bringing the carts in. We thought you’d call.”

Call? “Hi. My name is Elsa. I left my beer there. Can you bring it to my house? Sure, we can drink it when you get here.”

So she let me go get another one—a fresh 18-pack. Hurray!


Rather than this being a testament to the moral goodness of people, I think it’s a testament to the cart corral system. Clearly, with my cart all pushed up nicely with the other carts, no one could see my beer. If I had just left it out in the parking lot all alone, ready to run into another car, someone surely would have seen it.

And they would be having Four Beer Friday right now. Instead, Four Beer Friday is back on at our house. And it will only cost $3.32 ($.83 per beer) rather than $6.64 (which is what it would be if I had to BUY my beer back rather than simply reclaim the original beer).

All that math stuff was just for Frank.