As a sharp-eyed and dryly humorous spectator of human behavior, going out to shop is always full of humorous anecdotes.  Today, as I shopped in a somewhat “under construction” Wal-Mart with a largely Latino clientele and employee base, I got the chance to practice my Spanglish while trying to keep out of too much trouble.  I was there for an electric razor (as the battery on my old one gave out–apparently my relationship with electronics of all kinds and their batteries is very bad, even worse than usual), and I picked up a watch and a 6″ sub meal while waiting for my mom to finish shopping–I tend to be rather efficient with my purchases, not liking to waste time dilly dallying.

As I was waiting for my mother and trying not to completely destroy a watch while opening its container (and not entirely succeeding at the task), I got to watch employees joke around about their parking spaces, I got to see a lot of pregnant women with their novios and small children, and quite a few people in crutches or wheelchairs.  In the Subway I saw a couple of electricians trying to deal with some leaking electronics, which merely added to the theme of machinery gone bad.

The funniest episode, though, took place afterward.  My mother had purchased four (very heavy) bookshelves for a home library project and a couple of friendly employees took them out to the car for us (I had to lug the heavy boxes in).  When she checked her receipt, though, she found that she had only been charged for three of the boxes instead of the four she had purchased.  Instead of taking the mistake as a “gift” from Wal-Mart, she actually called to state that she had not been charged fully, and will have the issue taken care of tomorrow.  The person from Wal-Mart was so effusive in thanking her for it, that one has to imagine this may not have happened that someone called in a favorable error in order to avoid theft in a long time.

As someone who has written a fair amount about theft, and been very harsh against it, let us note that being a person of integrity and avoiding stealing also means avoiding taking advantage of errors in your favor such as a “free” bookshelf.  It means being honest about those errors and paying the fair price rather than taking advantage of someone else’s mistakes.  Is that such an uncommon thing in these time?  Are we all so careless and so quick to exploit others that we are unwilling to be gracious and avoid taking advantage of someone else?  Let us neither cheat others nor be cheated ourselves, if at all possible, and let there be room for old-fashioned good-neighborly behavior towards others.  We cannot complain about a lack of civility and looking out for others unless we practice those virtues ourselves, after all.