WWYD: What We Did

In this installment of “WWYD,” a couple accidentally walks out of the store with an item they didn’t pay for and thinks about this column:

My fiance and I got a cat over the weekend. We went to a Petco in the middle of our city to buy supplies. It’s in a mini-shopping center with a small parking lot, but still crammed. This store has street entry but is located underground, so you have to go down stairs or take the elevator if you use a cart, and it’s kind of cramped and narrow (compared to what you’d find in the suburbs).

Seeing that this was our first pet, it was a whirlwind of “I have no idea what I’m doing” debates about food and litter and carriers while trying to avoid other people and their pets as we navigated our cart. We finally paid, got all the way outside and started loading our car when I realized that I’d forgotten about the giant, heavy tub of litter on the cart’s bottom rack.

I looked at my fiance. He looked at me. “Did we pay for this?” I asked.

“Probably not.”

And because he is a better (and less lazy) person than me, I knew what the answer to the next question would be before I asked: “Are we going to go back in and pay?”

Even though it would be a pain to lug the heavy thing all the way back down the stairs, to the register, and wait in line again (we still had to go get the cat itself, and I could see the weary resignation on his face) his answer was: “Of course.”

So we did. The woman at the cash register seemed pretty surprised, and thanked us for our honesty. What was it — 10 extra minutes maybe? That’s why I love him. All the while, I was thinking about the WWYD column. I have to admit that if he hadn’t been with me, there was a good chance I’d have loaded the car and driven off. Not to avoid the cost, but just the perceived slight hassle. — J.

(Thanks for thinking of us, J.! And yes, I would have lugged that thing back in and paid for it as well.)

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