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Sunday, June 27, 2004
Cursing the food

God works in funny ways. Last ~~week~~ month (yes, this entry is very, very delayed), a supermarket mishap made me curse the world.

At the root of it was my obsession with my income. Although I have a paid internship at Court TV, I actually have a negative net income. With taxes, rent, utilities, and food to pay for, I use up my entire check and then some. To save money, I go out of my way to buy cheap groceries. Usually I go to The Met, which is a 15-minute walk (half an hour if you count both ways)from my apartment.

So on a Saturday afternoon, I stocked up on over a pound of peaches, along with my usual staples. Besides being far away, the other downside to the Met is that they scan items incorrectly 40% of the time. As I paid for my groceries this day, I watched the cashier like a hawk and made sure I wasn't overcharged for anything. I could hardly believe my luck! This time, I didn't have to hold up the line while the cashier shouted "ID!" to get permission to rescan my items.

I walked home all happy, but when I opened my bags, I realized the peaches weren't there. Then all the pricing errors flooded back into my head: the time I was charged $7 for a bag of tomatoes. The time I paid for a can of tuna but didn't take it home. The time I was double-charged because the cashier rescanned my groceries correctly but didn't erase the incorrect charge.

In anywhere but Manhattan, you'd go back to the store, explain the error, get the manager to apologize, and receive a free bag of peaches in return. But in Manhattan, they'd probably accuse me of lying and send me back home empty-handed. So I went to another supermarket and grudingly re-bought my week's supply of fruit.

But my shopping wasn't over yet. I needed some cocoa powder, but I purposely didn't buy it at the supermarket, because there's this deli by my place that sells it for $1.99, compared to the grocery's $2.79. Imagine my surprise when I saw the deli's new price of cocoa: $3.50! Why do I even bother shopping around? If I weren't so cost-conscious, I'd buy all my groceries from one place and ironically save money (and sanity) in the process.

So I went back to the supermarket for the third time in two days, just to pick up one can of cocoa. Of course the grocery store raised their price too (but fortunately not to $3.50), and I cursed everything related to food as I paid for my cocoa. Stupid "rebounding" economy. The U.S. is doing so well that it's going into inflation, but my salary's not any higher. And don't get me started on shrinking food packages. Last year, Edy's shrunk their ice cream cartons but kept prices the same, hoping no one would notice. This month, my favorite East coast brand, Turkey Hill, sunk to the same cheap tactic. Ooh!

As I was grumbling, I stopped and saw a large box in front of an apartment. There was a sign that read something like: "We're moving! Take anything for free!" Inside the box was tons of food that I only dreamed of buying. I felt so happy but ashamed at the same time. I cursed God about not being able to afford food, and His response was to just give it to me.

I grabbed a box of tomato-basil linguine, gourmet sauce mixes (satay, peanut, and Thai curry), Swiss Miss Marshmallow Lovers hot cocoa, apple cider mix, and some cans of tuna (Ha, that's for the grocery store, who didn't bag my tuna!)

Now I know what it means to say that God provided for me. A common way of saying grace is going, "Thank you God for providing this food for me." 99% of the time, God doesn't directly provide the food. He gives you a source of income, which allows you to purchase the food. Or he gives you a friend to treat you to food. But this time, He really did give me food. It was dropped in the middle of the street for me to find. And if I didn't have to go back to the Met to correct the shopping mishaps, I would have missed the gift.

posted by Jessica at 10:48 PM | 6 comments

6 Comments:

Wow, awesome!

By Anonymous, at 1:34 PM

Wow. Thanks for sharing. It must be cool working even though you're poor. You get to do stuff! -Christina

By Anonymous, at 8:46 PM

that's awesome :-) - skimpy230

By Anonymous, at 3:22 AM

Superb entry.

By Nicholas C., at 1:13 PM

funny how things work out. well to feed your obsession, lets swap location for cheap food! i would post but then i do not want ppl buying up my groceries or the place jacking up the price cause of more income ^^. sorry for those that are reading this.

-Zhi

By Anonymous, at 1:48 AM

soooo, i guess the majority of humanity that lives on less than $1 a day, and all those people who starve to death daily are just not believers?

By gillian e., at 3:49 PM