Banned from Boston?

shouldn't be a major problem. If you ended up purchasing the grapes, the difference in weight would have been negligible. However, eating a meatball from a buffet out of a take-out box, then throwing them both away is stealing and wasteful. I am assuming that since she needed to put it into a takeout box, it was slightly larger than your grape.

All the author had to do was add the box to the sushi she ended up purchasing and pay for it.

Debra
A Stitch In Time ( http://astitchintime.blogspot.com )
Simple Still Life ( http://simplestilllife.blogspot.com )

Oh, I didn't take it personally, Kaijsa, don't worry. I was just feeling like these "dine and dash" apologists give the rest of my generation (assuming they even are of my generation) a bad name.

By no means are all, or even most young people "entitled" and I didn't mean to imply that! I just see too much of it, especially from parents of college students. Your lessons to your son sound exactly like those my mom taught me when I was a child and I know it works!

Hell, I just ate a grape last night in the Whole Foods by my house. I couldn't tell from the sign if they were seedless or not and didn't want to buy the kind with seeds for my neighbor. I would be pretty surprised if anyone gets on their high horse about that grape.

In theory I could have asked some employee if I could have a grape. And they would have either looked at me funny and shrugged, or become confused and asked a manager, causing hassle and delay for everyone.

-----------------
Liz Henry
lizzard@bookmaniac.net
Badgermama ( http://badgermama.blogspot.com ) - personal & mommyblog
http://liz-henry.blogspot.com

I'm one of those "young people," (though without the sense of entitlement, I guess) and I don't have a lot of sympathy, either. Eating without paying is the same as taking without paying, and I'm trying to figure out how that puts Whole Foods in the wrong.

Right now I'm trying to teach my son that we cannot open and eat the Life Cereal in the middle of the grocery aisle -- we have to take it and pay for it, first. Only then is it ours to eat.

I don't have a lot of sympathy, either. Stealing is stealing and I'm always amazed when seemingly responsible adults think they should be able to "sample" whatever they like. As somebody who works with college students, I see this sense of entitlement in a variety of ways, and it's disturbing. I guess young people are learning it from their parents.

And you know that if this particular store has had to go to the trouble to put up signs about it, then the "grazing" must have reached problem proportions. I don't get it, either, but then I've never been a rule-breaker.

Belinda ( http://www.ninjapoodles.com )

Did I just miss something? Just because you consume groceries "on premises" does not mean they are free.

I have noticed some people who do graze at Whole Foods. They go from one freebie (the sample trays) and to the next and then walk on out without buying anything. I always assumed these were people who were down on their luck.

As for the case cited in the original post, maybe I'm just from a different generation.

Why would you not pay for it to begin with?

I used to know someone whose job it was to watch people in grocery stores and bust them if they ate food and didn't pay for it. I think they just generally made people pay for it though and not ban them.

Monkey Trouble ( http://sassymonkey.wordpress.com/ ), Sassymonkey Reads ( http://sassymonkeyreads.wordpress.com/ ), and Sassymonkey Eats ( http://sassymonkeyeats.wordpress.com/ )