Lets Talk About Safeway
I wanted to give everyone a chance to weigh in on the whole Safeway incident in Hawaii. I have watched it over the past couple of news cycles and have come to the conclusion that the manager at Safeway is an idiot.
If you have not heard the story, here is the quick version. Couple moves from California to Hawaii a couple of weeks ago. Get lost on their way to buy groceries. Find a Safeway. While in the store they eat a sandwich. The total cost of the sandwich? $5. They save the plastic to scan when they pay for the groceries. The couple pays for $50 worth of groceries. They forget to pay for the sandwich. After they go through the checkout line they are stopped, hauled off to the manager's office and the police called. The couple is with their 3 year old daughter. The police show up, arrest the couple and child welfare takes their daughter away from the couple for the next 18 hours.
Here is my problem with the whole thing. This would have been completely different if the couple did not buy any groceries and tried to steal a sandwich. The thing is they ate it in open sight, paid for the rest of the groceries and forgot to pay for the sandwich. Lets say though they did intend to steal the sandwich. Does Safeway need to send both of them to jail? Why not just one parent so the other can stay with the two year old? When the manager saw child welfare services come in, they could have stopped the whole thing at least for one parent, but they did not. They were perfectly fine with the child being taken away from the parents. So, now Safeway has the entire world hating them and a PR disaster for which there really is no recovery because no matter what they do, people will remember them for this.