So I went into my health food store of choice one late night and bought $50 worth of groceries. I left my coupon for $5 off of any purchase over $50 at home but figured I would just come back tomorrow with the coupon and the receipt as they always honor this. The cashier seemed like a hip dude and told me, “Hey, I have a $5 coupon here we can use.” I was like, “Cool.”
When I grabbed my change it was all bills. I paused for a bit, pondering whether he screwed me the additional 22 cents I had coming or whether he had just “rounded up,” like a bartender who says with a charming smile as he flexes his bicep from beneath his sleeveless shirt, “Here, this one’s on me,” graciously offering as a gift something that belongs to someone else. I think I may do that technique at a restaurant on some rainy day in the future. When a cute girl is about to leave into the elements I will be like, “Here, take this umbrella.” She will be like, “Thank you so much! Here is my number if you want to call me later and have sex.” I’ll at least be honest. I’ll say, “I’m less into sex as I am stealing umbrellas that don’t belong to me from the bucket by the door.” Back to the NOW of the story, (as I have seen a couple of DVDs with Eckart Tolle) I went outside and half a block later turned around and came back.
“Hey, did I leave any of my change on the counter here?” I asked in the only subtle way I could figure out how to say, “Hey jackass, you shorted me!” He said no and I had to decide whether 22 cents was worth calling the manager and making a big deal over someone who was most probably a good guy who was just a shitty mathematician. Perhaps I should instead search out the career counselor who suggested “cashier” to him and beat the piss out of that moron. I left.
The next day I went in and grabbed a few pieces of these nutty, chocolaty squares from the bulk food section and shoved them in my pocket. I followed the necessary precautions of first putting them in a bag, and then getting out of the line of fire of the security cameras. While I usually reflect in shame on the many all-you-can-eat buffets I’ve had at this very bulk food section back when I thought the word “ethics” meant “people who aren’t white,” today my years of free gorging experience came in handy.
On the way out, Mike the manager said, “Good evening, Swami,” and my guilty mind thought, “He knows!” I remember one time as a youth at my friend’s house where I went into his refrigerator (we had an open fridge policy back then) and grabbed an apple and at that moment his father entered the room and said, “Swami, what are you doing?” (I wasn’t sure why he called me “Swami” but obviously it had a tremendous influence on my future choice of career. Imagine where I’d be today if he instead said, “Mathematician, what are you doing?”) I shouted, “Nothing!” and ran out of the room as guilty as a three-dollar whore.
Today we have so many buffers and procedures and rules and chains-of-command to follow that it seems just to get your 22 cents worth you have to put in at least 50 cents worth of effort, resulting in a net loss of 28 cents (hmm, mathematician…?). “But if everyone took the law into their own hands it would be anarchy!” Perhaps. Or maybe people would finally start to take responsibility for themselves and their actions, knowing that they couldn’t cry to their surrogate mommies and daddies called the government, lawyers, police, managers or pimps every time you blew someone and the three dollar bill they gave you came out of a Monopoly set. You see, anarchy requires ethics, otherwise it is just sociopathic behavior.
Did I possibly, just maybe, happenstancedly take slightly more than 22 cents worth of the chocolate peanut square things? Of course. But I’m a sociopath who uses logic and pseudo-spirituality to justify his deviant ways. What’s your excuse?
I just threw two dimes and two pennies into a storm grate as a show of solidarity.
Right on, brother! Just tell me which storm grate that was, as I may go out there with my long string and magnet?