On Not Being an Asshole

I don’t play pit games, I don’t go to strip clubs, and I don’t get table service at Las Vegas nightclubs. Whole Foods is my leak.

Last night I was there for the second time in two days. My girlfriend has been cramming for the GRE and just had her bike stolen, so I wanted to get her a treat. At the bakery counter, they sell these mini chocolate mousse cakes that she likes.

The couple ahead of me in line were in their late 60’s. They looked lifelong outdoors people, he with scraggly beard, she with close-cropped hair and weather-worn face, both rail-thin.

There were two mousse cakes left in the display case. The woman behind the counter handed one to the old couple. “We need two, please,” the man corrected her. The last two.

The woman took out the other cake, inspected it for a moment, and then showed him a small blemish. Perhaps 0.5% of the icing had fallen off. “It’s a little broken, do you still want it?”

“We get a reduced price, right?” the man asked aggressively, leaning over the counter.

“No, I’m sorry.”

“It should be a reduced price, if it’s damaged.”

“I’m sorry, we don’t do that. We donate imperfect items to the food kitchen, we don’t ever sell them at a discount.”

“That’s not right,” the man insisted.

At this point I was strongly tempted to jump in and offer to buy the cake at full price. I don’t think that in principle there would be anything wrong with doing so.

The thing is, if I’m honest with myself, securing the cake for my girlfriend would not have been my true primary motivation. They sell other things she likes. The guy was being a nit, and I wanted to call him out on it, embarrass him.

Chastened, I held my tongue. The employee resolved the whole situation with an offer to get more cakes from the back. “That sounds good. It’s my birthday!” the man declared with childish delight. The woman disappeared for a moment and returned with a whole tray of cakes. “How much for the whole tray?” the man joked. He was starting to grow on me.

Meanwhile a second employee came over to ask what I wanted. “One to of those, too, actually,” I told her, pointing to the tray of cakes.

“You’re going to buy a whole tray too?” the man asked me jovially.

“They are so good!” his wife chimed in with an endearing, grandmotherly smile.

“Yes, but I think my girlfriend would kill me I brought home a whole tray.” She laughed earnestly. These were turning out to be very nice people, maybe on a fixed income but eager to celebrate a birthday. I was glad I hadn’t been rude to them.

On my way to the cash register, I dropped my cake. It was inside of a plastic container, so it wasn’t ruined- the icing just got a little smashed against the lid of the container. They probably would have given me a different one if I’d asked, but that didn’t seem like an option. It would taste the same in the end anyway.

The police recovered Emily’s bike. The thieves had actually stolen our landlord’s entire bike rack (it wasn’t bolted down) with two bikes still locked to it, but for unknown reasons perhaps owing to the logistical difficulties of transporting a large steel bike rack with two attached bikes had discarded in the bushes of a neighbor’s property barely a block away.