Today I stole three red onions.
While I did not go shopping intending to steal vegetables of any kind nor steal out of need or desperation, I definitely walked out of Albert Heijn, the largest supermarket chain in the Netherlands, a thief.
Look, when they were first introduced I tried to avoid using the self-check-out kiosks that are now commonplace in supermarkets. Just one more way to remove jobs people need, I thought. More machine-to-me time? No thanks. Yet the more other others used the machines, the fewer people there were to check you out and soon I just started self-scanning too. Stand in line and stick to my principles or go with the flow and get out of there quickly and with ease?
By now it is just a habit to scan the stuff myself. The system won and I can’t even remember when I lost.
At 5:00 PM today, the sun (which will not set until 11:00) was high and bright and my local Albert Heijn was as crowded as it gets. People were buying picnic supplies and beer and stuff for dinner.
By the time I went to pay for groceries (bread, three packages of hummus, the onions) I had to stand in a healthy line of people waiting to do the same.
About the hummus: Each comes in little plastic tubs. Plastic is now ubiquitous at the grocery store, which is terribly depressing. But the hummus was also on sale. Pay for two, scan your Albert Heijn “yu belong to us” card, and get a third free.
As a line to check out is all but unprecedented these days, once I started to scan I found myself not wanting to lollygag lest I make others wait.
But I could not scan the onions. Usually, there is a tag on the fishnet bag that holds them together. You scan that. Or was I misremembering this? Maybe these are one of those items you search for? Like croissants or a single red pepper? (Now also wrapped in plastic.) But when I searched for onions nothing came up.
So what are my options? Make everybody wait as I find somebody to help me with the price? Go find replacement onions that have a bar-code tag? Add a random product like a croissant?
Nope. Instead, I do not scan my “you belong to us” card and will, in exchange for stealing three onions, pay for the third tub of hummus.
Mostly I pay for the reminder to shop at Saturday’s farmer’s market.