When You Have Good Aisle Style

I am shopping in a crowded supermarket. I find a few items I am looking for, add them to my cart, and keep shopping.

Not far down the aisle, I see the same type of items at a better price, so I decide to swap them for the items I have already put in my cart. I then leave my cart where it was and walk the short way back to the place where I had taken the original items off the shelves. It’s a maximum of three metres or so.

I start placing the items I’m not buying back on the shelves in the correct places. A store manager is walking by.

Store Manager: “Ma’am, what are you doing?”

Me: “Oh, I saw similar items a little down the aisle that I decided to buy instead, so I’m just putting these back where they belong.”

He looks stunned and starts absolutely GUSHING:

Store Manager: “Oh, wow, ma’am, thank you so much! It’s so incredible that you’re putting the items back instead of leaving them in some random place in the store for an employee to find and return to their place! Thank you so much, really!”

I’m pretty sure he was gushing partly to make an impression on the other customers, because clearly, my (responsible) behavior was outside the norm, but I think I made that poor man’s day by taking less than ten seconds to make his job just a little less awful.

It still shocks me when I’m in a store with a friend and they decide to just leave something in a random place and say that it’s someone’s job to pick up after them.