Good karma or crappy service? You decide.

I don't know why but I have been craving apple fritters like mad lately. Actually I do know why, but this is neither the time nor the place to be discussing my PMS. Anywho, the apple fritters. I can honestly say that I don't remember the last time I ate an apple fritter, but my body's been telling me, "You need to gorge on apple fritters and you need to do it now." I pretended I was one of those holistic hippies who listens to her body and headed out to the store to procure apple fritters for a good gorging. I bought two, one for the ride home and one for after dinner (shut up, like you don't do it too...).

While at the store I decided to make my trip a bit more productive and bought four bananas, a bag of salad, and a loaf of garlic bread in addition to my two apple fritters (priced at ninety-nine cents each). When I checked out, my total only came to $5.35. I literally said, "That's all?" to the cashier, but she assured me it was right. I just shrugged and figured my Fresh Values card must have gotten me a super-duper fresh value on one of my items and went on my merry way. Later, I checked my receipt and saw that the checker had only charged me fifty-nine cents (the price of a regular doughnut) instead of the $1.98 it should have been. If I had noticed the mistake while it was still handy for me to call attention to it, I would have. But my personal conviction is once I'm out of the store/restaurant, it's no longer my obligation to rectify the situation (for the record, I've been overcharged for stuff too, and have just let it slide on more than one occasion).

The weird thing is that stuff like this seems to be happening to me a lot lately. A couple of months ago I went to lunch with friends where the waitress only charged me for the drink and side salad and completely forgot to charge me for the entree. When I brought it to her attention, she shrugged and said, "Well, I'm sure not going to add it on now," like it was too much of a bother. A few weeks later I was taking a friend to lunch and the waitress only charged us for one drink instead of two. I told the little Thai woman at the register that there should be two drinks but she just kept pointing at the ticket and saying, "This says one." I finally shrugged and mumbled, "I tried to do the right thing..."

So I'm starting to wonder. Is all this undercharging the universe's way of paying me back for all the times I've held doors for people, let people merge in front of me, and smiled at ugly children? Or is it just idiocy on the cashiers' part? Because if it's just idiocy I'm going to stop being so nice to people all the time.