Grocery Shopping – Don’t eat before you pay!

A fun tip: grocery shopping with an iPod (iPhone) and a good pair of headphones that block out the screaming kids and general drone of the super market is much more enjoyable than without. Okay, that sounds harsh, but I generally enjoy listening to my music, too. The fact that my headphones block out the extra noise is a much enjoyed added bonus.

Something the headphones don’t block out, however, and something I would probably call a pet peeve of mine, are people who eat the grocery food while they’re shopping and before they’ve paid for it. Yesterday I saw a woman eating a bag of doughnuts while strolling around the store. Then, a different woman eating a bag of chips, and a totally different person opening a bag of cookies for their kid to stuff in its face! What the heck?! When did that become socially acceptable?

Doing a quick Google search, I did read that in some countries it is acceptable. This article says it normal to sample food in Saudi Arabian grocery stores, but acknowledges that this is different than American customs. Besides, there is a difference between sampling and polishing off a bag of doughnuts and Doritos only to wash it down with a bottle of pop. No, I’m not going to be all “[queue fake southern accent] That’s not how we do it in America!”…though, the gluttonous act of feeding yourself food that has yet to be paid for and think that this is perfectly okay, does fit in with the modern “lazy Americans” ethos.

So what’s the big deal? Besides being socially unacceptable (in my opinion), there are other reasons that the store owners, employees and other customers would also disapprove.

For the store owners, who’s interest is to make sure patrons do not steal food, there should be a constant worry toward anyone eating the food while shopping. It’s just too easy for someone to finish a food product and stash the wrapper on a shelf somewhere. Trust me, if you look for empty food wrappers next time you go shopping, you’ll probably see some. The offending people might  also forget to tell the casher about the consumed product. In either case, it’s just plane bad. For example, forgetting to pay for gas before driving off will still get the cops called on you.

For the employees, they are tasked with the added job of cleaning up after these people. The crumbs that are dropped, the empty stolen food wrappers, all of that needs to be cleaned up – all of which came from people who just couldn’t wait to crack open a snack.

And finally, it effects the majority of people who don’t snack and shop because eat-before-you-pay sends the wrong message to kids and other adults who are less inclined to keep up the status-quo.

Eating food in a grocery store before you pay for it leads to higher product losses, a messier store, and unnecessary extra work needed to be done by employees. All of this adds to higher grocery bills for us due to compensation for stolen merchandise and extra work required by employees and store owners.

Simple fix: Don’t eat food while grocery shopping.

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