FROM THE PUBLISHER’S DESK

On not losing any sleep over something I kinda stole

Posted

Some might consider it highway robbery to be asked to pay eight bucks for a small vial of tiny white pellets that are supposed to magically help you fall asleep.
So I figured I’d just steal them instead.
Twice.
And I got away with it.
OK, not really. Well, sort of “not really.” The true story is that not once, but on two occasions recently I actually did walk out of a Whole Foods store with a tube of Coffea Cruda – a ChapStick-sized container of 80 pellets advertising treatment for “sleeplessness with mental hyperactivity” – without paying for them.
I confess to you that it was an inadvertent theft. Which is to say that I realized I’d stolen them only after I’d gotten to my car with the rest of my purchases. But I must further confess that not once, but on both occasions, at my point of realization, I drove away without going back into the store to pay for them.
And it all ended up somehow being OK.
In case you’re not familiar with it, Coffea Cruda is a dilution of a type of green coffee bean. A company called Bioron markets and sells it as a homeopathic solution to sleeplessness, something I’ve struggled with from time to time. Having tried all manner of “natural” remedies after weaning myself off the sleep-medicine prescription I took for many years, I gave Coffea Cruda a shot after seeing it at Whole Foods. For many months now, I simply put three of the pellets under my tongue at night and usually sleep deeply and uninterrupted for at least six or seven hours – a significant victory for anyone who regularly experiences sleep interruption.
So why did I resort to stealing it?
Here’s how it happened: the first time I took them from the store without paying, I found the tube in the bottom of my cart as I was unloading my groceries in my car. “Crap,” I thought, realizing I hadn’t seen them there while checking out. But being an honest bloke, as well as a regular Whole Foods customer, I knew I’d be back there again, and I knew I’d remember to offer to pay for them.
The next time I was at the store, I was strategic: instead of putting the pellets in the cart, I CARRIED THEM in my hand – all the way through the checkout line and to my car. Yes: even as I was moving items from my cart to the conveyor at checkout, the pellets were still in my hand. I’d been carrying them so long around the store I’d forgotten about them.
As I was unloading groceries in my car, I realized, again, I hadn’t paid.
Double-crap.
Fast-forward to my next visit to Whole Foods: I picked up a tube of the pellets and placed them in a green plastic produce bag, guaranteeing I’d see them. At checkout, I explained to the cashier: hey, here’s one vial of Coffea Cruda, but I owe you for THREE of them, since I accidentally “stole” two on previous visits.
He laughed.
“It’s OK,” he said.
“No,” I insisted. “Please charge me for three.”
“Really,” he said, “it’s OK. If I do that it’ll really mess with our inventory system. Don’t worry about it. I just appreciate your honesty.”
My pleas to him fell on deaf ears.
We went back and forth on the subject of my stolen sleeping pellets for a bit before I relented.
“Don’t lose any sleep over it,” he joked.