My old excuse for avoiding Black Friday sales:

My new excuse for avoiding Black Friday sales:

I might have inadvertently stomped on a guy’s nuts…I’m not really sure how it happened, so I’m hoping someone can enlighten me.

I was meeting up with some friends for dinner one night, and ended up at the restaurant a bit early. I couldn’t get a table because the place had a policy of not seating groups until all members were present, so I went to the little lounge area to wait for my friends. As I was sitting around, the greeter guy (“Greeter Guy”) came up to me and asked:

To which I replied:

Greeter Guy then left to go take care of a few customers. Three minutes later, he returned and asked:

I again told him “no,” but instead of leaving it at that, Greeter Guy started naming specific beverages and asking me if wanted any of them:

GREETER GUY: Would you like some green tea?

ME: No, thank you.

GREETER GUY: How about some Asahi?

ME: No, thank you.

GREETER GUY: What about some flavored sake?

ME: No, thank you.

GREETER GUY: Plum wine?

ME: No…

I don’t know if Greeter Guy had to meet some kind of beverage quota or what, but he was having a difficult time accepting that I really didn’t want anything to drink, and it was starting to annoy me. I know he was probably just doing his job, but his apparent passion for customer service was turning into pushiness. So finally, I told him:

Greeter Guy’s “Okay then” was said with that don’t-say-I-didn’t-warn-you tone…as if I were, like, some kind of mutant freak for not wanting anything to drink. But he left, so whatever.

One of my friends showed up soon after, and the other two were just a few minutes away. I decided to take that brief moment to go wash my hands before dinner. The restrooms were located down a small hallway, past the kitchen entrance. The entrance was covered by one of those Asian door-curtain things, so I couldn’t see the people working in there. I could, however, hear them talking, and I managed to catch a bit of their conversation as I made my way to the women’s room.

“Not right now?” Isn’t that what I said to Greeter Guy to make him stop bothering me?

…Nah, that person b*tchin’ in the kitchen couldn’t have been Greeter Guy. Why would he make such a big deal out of me not wanting anything to drink? He must hear that all the time! It must be someone else talking about something that coincidentally involves drinks and getting “Not right now” as a response. I bet one of the chefs was just complaining about getting rejected by a chick he tried to hit on in a club.

I washed my hands and went back to the lounge. By then, the rest of my friends had arrived and Greeter Guy took us to our table. As I sat down, he asked me:

OMG, sour grapes! It was Greeter Guy who was b*tchin’ in the kitchen!

I opened my mouth to call him out on what I heard him say on my way to the bathroom, but I couldn’t get the words out. There was a good chance I was wrong. I mean, why would this guy be offended when a customer declines service? Everyone knows that when a restaurant employee asks “Can I get you anything to drink,” it’s not because he really cares if you’re thirsty. No, he’s asking such questions because he has to. It’s a food-service norm that is practiced millions of times a day, by millions of people around the world. And you can’t tell me that every answer is “yes.” There is a 50/50 percent chance that the customer is not going to want anything–and what’s so offensive about that?

But deep down, I knew the guy in the kitchen was Greeter Guy and I knew he was complaining about me. But I still couldn’t risk the embarrassment of being wrong, so I just said:

And then he left and ignored my friends and me the rest of the evening.

I honestly don’t understand what was so wrong about not wanting a drink. It wasn’t like I was turning down a cocktail he had paid for; that tab was on me. He was just the person who’d be physically handing me the glass. So I have no idea where he got that rejection sh*t, or why he acted as if I’d stomped on his nuts. But I’ll own up to it if I was actually the one who was the social retard. I would just like to know why.

I know it’s a little late for me to be commenting on that story about the couple who was arrested for failing to pay for $5-worth of sandwiches, but I’m going to jump into the discussion anyway because (1) this happened in Hawaii, my home state; (2) I’ve been to that particular Safeway a number of times; and (3) the story really pissed me off. Like, really pissed me off…

In case you weren’t familiar with the details, I have drawn them out for you with help from my cats and MS Paint.

Okay, so Husband, Wife, and Daughter take a bus to get some groceries, get lost, and end up at a supermarket called Safeway. I’m not really sure what happened next because several articles had reported the facts differently: one article stated Wife got dizzy and went to Safeway to get something to eat, another said she and her family were already shopping when she started feeling ill. But whatever. Wife starts feeling dizzy, and decides she needs to eat something.

Wife sees some pre-made sandwiches in the store and starts eating one. And here’s where things start looking stanky to me:

For some reason, Husband decides he will also eat a sandwich even though he apparently isn’t sick or dizzy like Wife is. What the f*ck #1.

Husband and Wife eat the sandwiches as they continue their grocery shopping. When they are done, they put the wrappers into the cart because–as they have since claimed–they intended to pay for the sandwiches when they checked out.

Husband and Wife take their cart to a check-out stand and pay for about $50 worth of groceries.

I’m guessing the cashier didn’t see the empty wrappers in the cart or something because the $50 bill did not include the two sandwiches the couple had eaten minutes earlier. And neither Husband nor Wife made any mention of this oversight until a security guard stopped them as they were leaving Safeway.

And this was where I really lost it: both Husband and Wife forgot to pay for the sandwiches. Both. Did they also forget that they’d eaten the sandwiches minutes earlier? I’m assuming the answer is “yes” because I can’t imagine how you could remember eating something you didn’t pay for, but then later forget to pay. It’s beyond ridiculous, and I’m not buying it. I mean, I’m willing to give Wife a pass for forgetting because she wasn’t feeling well when she ate her sandwich–but the pass comes begrudgingly. She says she didn’t remember because things were hectic and she was dizzy, but how come she was still able to walk around and buy groceries while eating at the same time? It’s shady as hell.

But let’s give Wife the benefit of the doubt and say she genuinely forgot to pay for the sandwiches because she was suffering through a mental tornado. What’s Husband’s excuse for not paying? He can’t even explain why he ate a sandwich! He clearly didn’t forget to pay, and chose not to bring it up when he checked out. He probably just kept his mouth shut to see if he and Wife could get away with not paying for something they consumed. What the f*ck #2.

Of course, we all know how it all played out: Husband and Wife were arrested, and Daughter stayed in foster care for, like, 18 hours. And then the story ended up all over the national news (although, oddly enough, it didn’t get very much attention from Hawaii’s media) and people started giving Safeway crap because they read “child custody” and sh*t themselves.

The anti-Safeway crowd is acting on emotion rather than substance. In their minds, losing temporary custody of one’s child is punishment that does not fit the crime of stealing $5-worth of sandwiches. But it’s not about the paltry sum of money; it’s the principle. When you go into that particular Safeway, there is a sign that says something like, “We will prosecute all shoplifters.” It doesn’t say “We will only prosecute shoplifters who don’t have children,” or “We will only prosecute shoplifters who steal $100 worth of stuff.” It says “We will prosecute all shoplifters.” That language lets you know that a guy who steals something that costs $1 will be treated the same was as someone who steals an item that costs $100.

Everyone knows that shoplifting is a crime, and that doesn’t change just because the shoplifter has kids. The anti-Safeway people don’t see it that way because they are blinded by the baby factor–but what happens when you take the child out of the equation? What if Husband and Wife didn’t have a kid to begin with? Suddenly they start looking less like persecuted innocents and more like what? Shoplifters. And they deserved to be arrested.

And yet, Safeway ends up apologizing to Husband and Wife because of all the bad press they’d been getting as a result. Safeway shouldn’t have apologized. They didn’t do anything wrong. They caught Husband and Wife trying to steal, and called the police. Isn’t that what people do when they catch someone trying to steal their stuff? But how come Safeway is forced to say “We’re sorry we called the police after you tried to get away with not paying for the sandwiches you ate”? What the f*ck #3.

Why are people getting mad at Safeway for Husband and Wife’s child getting taken away in the first place? It wasn’t like they did this:

Safeway didn’t have any say in whether Child Protective Services took the child. After all, when you call the police on someone, you don’t get to determine how the person is dealt with. That’s a decision the responding officer makes, not the person reporting the crime. If it were otherwise, then I wouldn’t have let that girl who plowed into my car just pay me off for her sh*tty driving. I would have instead been like, “I want this b*tch taken to a North Korean labor camp where she can spend the rest of her life pounding pebbles!”

Seriously, man…What. The. F*ck.