SeanWard.org

“I’ll take it for $3.49,” says Alex. He wants his meat. They step away and whisper.

“Uh…,” says the cashier. “I’ll have to call the manager. They don’t usually allow substitutions.”

The woman behind Alex begins changing colors. Her face flushes, then pales, then turns a purple hue. She is trapped. There are long lines everywhere. The manager shows up dressed in a bright blue starched vest with store logo embla-zoned across it. She has a conference with the cashier, then the bagboy, then both of them. Finally she turns to Alex.

“What’s the problem, Sir?”

She’s short, overweight, and has a stain that looks like lunch on her blouse. Alex figures by now that she knows what’s going on, and she has to notice the woman behind him with the horse teeth whose expression shifts from one rainbow hue to another as she twists the metal from her grocery cart. He explains everything carefully and adds, “I’ll take the Sangria for $3.49.” He wants his meat.

The manager speaks cryptically into a walkie-talkie, and then moves to the wine section. Another manager appears, walkie-talkie in hand. They talk, he folds his arms, she folds hers, they tap their feet, and then call the bagboy over. The bagboy points to the shelf, the Sangria, the unit price. They send him away. More arm folding and foot tapping. They add head nodding. The woman behind Alex growls. The manager returns.

“I’m sorry, Sir. We’re not allowed to make substitutions. If you want the Sangria, you’l1 have to pay the six dollars.”

“Seven,” I correct her. “And the sign says $3.49. You should honor it.”

“The sign is for a different Sangria.”

”It’s misleading. You have three Sangrias, three prices.”

“We don’t know how that happened, Sir. The other manager says he’s never seen that brand before. We don’t carry it.”

“You don’t carry the brand?”

“No, Sir.”

“I see.” Alex considers telling her that he works in the D.A.’s office, that this is bait and switch advertising and the fine is a minimum of $10,000. He wishes he had a badge to flash and a small notebook to record her name in, “…for the report, Ma’am.” A good ploy, but doomed to failure. He’s convinced that she’s either a cunning and evil grocery store manager cashing in on acting lessons, or she really is an idiot who won’t understand bait and switch even if she does it all day. And with his luck, the woman behind him probably does work for the District Attorney, and she’ll be more concerned that she’s had to wait in line because of some asshole than she will be that dozens of customers have been duped into buying cheap wine at double the price. She probably doesn’t like Sangria and she probably loves cats. He’ll be hauled off in cuffs, charged with imper-sonating an officer of the court and attempted reduction in price of an alcoholic beverage. If I wasn’t so hungry I would leave. I would just walk out, but there’s soup and Oreos.