Thursday, February 11, 2010

A warm feeling from a blizzard

This is a heartwarming story of local residents during the Great DC Blizzard of '10 doing the right thing by leaving money for the goods they took from an unmanned Safeway store:
Somehow, word got around to a few desperate shoppers, who made it over to the abandoned supermarket on Davenport Street NW and found something of value on shelves that had been nearly emptied by waves of snow-weary customers in recent days. Two witnesses told The Washington Post that they had been inside the store and seen people selecting goods and paying at unmanned cashier counters before leaving.

"People were getting groceries and leaving the money on the counter," Hilary Peterson said.

"The lot had been plowed, the lights were on, the PA system was operating, but there was no one working there," said shopper Frank Swain, who drove over in search of milk. "It felt like a movie set."

Swain said he would have taken and "left a couple of bucks for milk, but it was all gone," so he just left, but he watched as a couple with their dogs selected a variety of groceries and left payment for them.
This is something I would almost expect in Korea (in Seoul subway stations, newspaper sellers would leave a stack of papers completely unattended and people would take one and leave their 500 won or so), but you don't hear as much about these stories in the US (even though I know they happen).

It renews my faith in humanity, at least in the Greater Washington area. Here in Honolulu, Safeway patrons steal carts.

4 comments:

  1. This would've never happened in Canada. We'd line up to pay the non-existent cashier and therefore never leave.

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  2. What part of Canada are you from? The small parts of Toronto that Michael Moore used in his diatribe trying to show how safe Canada is and how safe we all feel?

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  3. He went to Windsor, Ontario, right across the river from Detroit, Michigan.

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  4. I'm from just outside Toronto, one of the rougher parts, actually. I doubt anyone would queue up here.rin

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