Let Me Tell You About the Time I Went to Whole Foods Jail

There I was, minding my own business in line for the self-checkout at my local Whole Foods Market when I felt a tap on my shoulder. My entire body went cold. This was it. I had finally been caught.

They must have me on camera, filling up a container from the hot food bar with prepared organic delights the likes of which I could never afford. Stacking salmon on top of mac and cheese, adjacent to some za’atar vegetables, rubbing elbows with a medley of orange chicken and tikka masala. It didn’t make sense as a meal, but it doesn’t have to make any sense when you’re the King of Getting Away With It.

With my large, fold-top container leaking from its seams, I set my master plan into motion. The plan that has worked so many times before, in so many Whole Foods Markets before this. I started frantically walking the aisles of the store, a panicked look on my face. I learned that with the right breathing technique, I can make myself turn a sickly shade of pale that, combined with the harsh glow of the overhead fluorescent lighting bouncing off my carefully-selected olive green t-shirt, gave me the look of someone trying to find his sea legs on land. I soon found an unwitting employee to make my accomplice and lend an extra layer of credibility to my chicanery.

“Please, tell me! Where is your bathroom? This is an emergency!” I begged, clearly ready to have a bad time right there in the aisle of the store, which would, of course, spread the bad times to everyone else. It was clear by the look on my face that if I wasn’t able to reach the toilet soon, they’d have to shut down the whole compound. God only knows when they’d be able to open up again. The kind employee pointed me in the right direction, in which I ran (quickly, but not too fast, which is the key to selling the ruse of a bathroom emergency). I entered the stall and let out a wail of agony…or so it seemed to everyone who just bought my lie hook, line, and sinker.

I was actually wailing with delight. For I had run to the bathroom with my previously-filled container of hot food in hand and was now enjoying the spoils of my heist in the stall, pants and underwear around my ankles, shovelling treats into my open mouth while my open bottom-hole caught a refreshingly cool breeze as it hovered over the pristine waters of the Whole Foods commode. The sign on the inside of the stall told me it was newly cleaned just that morning by an employee with the initials “GR”. It was pure bliss. Whoever said there’s no such thing as a free lunch has never felt quite like this.

I guess I was wrong — I would indeed pay, and dearly, for this lunch. The tap on my shoulder let me know the jig was up. I had exited the bathroom in mock humility. Head hanging low, feigning shame for my public restroom cacophony. My insides felt no shame, only pride, for planning and executing this pristine caper. I quickly grabbed a few small items: green tea, mints, saltine crackers — all carefully chosen for both their affordability and their part in the rumbly-tummy game I was playing. A second tap on my shoulder brought me out of my daydream. I don’t know how long I was lost in thought, but it was enough time to raise the ire of the shadowy figure that hovered over me, waiting to bring down his hammer and smash my intricately pieced together lark into a million fragments.

I turned around to find my arresting officer cloaked in anonymity. Of course, an undercover Narc tasked to roam the aisles and protect the precious assets of Jeff Bezos’ organic food empire needs to be a ghost. A hood concealed his face in shadow. Long sleeves flowed down his arms where, at the bottom, a bony finger beckoned me to follow. He turned, and to say that he began to walk towards the back of the store would be incorrect — his movement gave the appearance of floating, not unlike the classic Double Dolly shot made famous by film director Spike Lee. I wondered if I would do the right thing.

“Am I being detained?” I yelled at the top of my lungs, hoping to make a scene. Not a soul looked in my direction. It was as if they didn’t even hear my cries. Too embarrassed by what they were witnessing (or, perhaps, too guilty in their own sins and relieved it wasn’t them being led to the back) to look their fellow human in the eye. I know, from my research studying Small Crimes Tutorial and Know Your Rights channels on YouTube, that you’re supposed to always ask “Am I being detained?” when you think you might be being detained. If they say “No,” then you’re free to go. If they say “Yes,” then keep your mouth shut because you’re on the record, and anything you say can (and will) be used against you. My captor, however, was the one who said nothing. The YouTube channels made no mention of how to counter silence. He knew how to play the game just as well as I. A worthy adversary in this cat-and-mouse game. A Lieutenant Vincent Hanna to my Neil McCauley. We were about to have our moment across the diner table from one another.

Before I knew it, I was in the back of the store, sitting in an uncomfortable iron folding chair in the infamous Whole Foods Jail. I don’t remember moving my feet to get there; it was as if I materialized in the room. Across from me sat my hooded captor. Whole Foods Police knew what they were doing. The room was hot. Hotter than any I’d ever been in. It smelled foul, like old eggs. They must move the expired food in here after they remove it from the shelves. I was dealing with some real heavy hitters when it came to interrogations. It was clear they were trying to break me. I needed to stay strong.

I thought that my nemesis was on the verge of revealing himself, but he simply extended his arm and once again pointed his finger (which, if I were less of a sane man, I would swear was all bone and no flesh) toward a television screen. What came on the screen after a display of static and snow was a chilling revelation that the watchful eye of Whole Foods, in fact, sees all. All of my sins played out before me in their entirety; I was forced to watch with no reprieve. Every time I ransacked the free samples, filling my face, fists, and pockets with chips, or trail mix, or tiny pieces of Cowboy Beef Burger, leaving none for anyone who came behind me.

“They’re free samples! You’re supposed to take them!” I defiantly shot back. My stoic foe remained exactly so. Not a word was returned, and the evidence tape continued to play my misdeeds.

Missed scan after missed scan at the self-checkout.

“How was I supposed to know those items didn’t scan? I had noise-cancelling headphones on! I was in a rush! I get confused! I’m not a trained employee!” Just like I rehearsed so many times for an occasion such as this.

Plucking high-ticket items from the shelves and placing them into my reusable shopping bag instead of my basket, and then confidently checking out with a human employee, bagging my paid-for items on top of the pilfered loot as if it weren’t there.

“I…just forgot! I meant to pay for them, but it just slipped my mind that I put them in there.” I didn’t even believe the words coming out of my own mouth.

They saved the worst for last. There I was, not returning my cart to the corrall in the parking lot, scrolling on my phone as the solo cashier finished ringing up my items and then had to bag all of my items while I just stood there watching, like an asshole. I could have been bagging that whole time. Nope. I was just reading comments on a video I hatewatched on Instagram. I wanted to see if other people hated it as much as I did, and then also check out the profiles of any of the idiots who left positive comments to see how stupid they must be. Now, everybody behind me in line had a much longer wait. For these crimes, I had no reply. I could justify taking a little from Amazon, but there was no excuse for treating other people like this. I hung my head in shame. Actual shame, this time, not the fake shame I pretended to feel after my make-believe bathroom bonanza buffet.

A bell rang; a deep, low chime that reverberated through my being. It brought me out of my contemplation. I looked to my captor, who now held an hourglass in his frail hands. He turned it over. The sands began to fall from the top to the bottom, yet the grains in the upper bulb never diminished. My sentence was eternal. The floor beneath me turned molten. I began to sink, deeper and deeper towards my damnation until the liquid inferno passed my shoulders. I screamed out for mercy — to whom I did not know. I closed my eyes, expecting to be swallowed whole by infinity.

I opened my eyes to find that I was back at the hot bar. My large fold-top container was half full of mac and cheese, and my hand held a scooper brimming with wild-caught Alaskan salmon waiting to be placed on top of the yellow congealment. I was given another chance. Or perhaps, it was just a dream. I decided that I would not tempt fate. I placed my container on the sneeze guard before realizing what I was about to do. I picked it up and approached an employee.

“I’m so sorry, I don’t think I want this anymore.”

“No worries. Thanks for not just leaving it lying around. You can’t imagine how many people just leave messes for us to clean up.”

I shook my head in pretend disbelief. “Thank you.” Before I walked away, I needed to ask him one more thing.

“Can you please point me in the direction of the bathroom?”

His fully-fleshed finger directed me to the back of the store. I walked there slowly, taking it all in, studying the luxury grocery items on the shelves, realizing it may be the last time I step foot into a Whole Foods Market. I couldn’t risk a return and a potential backslide into sin. I entered the stall, and I sat on the toilet. I wept.

Shortly after my catharsis began, there was a knock on the door of the stall, accompanied by a “You okay in there, buddy?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I sniffled. “I’ll be out in just a sec.”

“No rush,” said the voice, and his calm tone let me know that he really meant it. “I’m just here to clean up. I’ll get to it when you’re done.”

I looked at the sheet on the inside of the door. The most recent cleaning was yesterday, by an employee with the initials “JC.” This must be “GR,” here to make things like new once again.

“I hope you’re not sneaking a free meal from the hot food bar in there,” the voice said, in the same pleasant tone that now filled me with a sense of dread. “It’s basically the perfect crime. Even if a member of the staff sees you take the food in there, you can just say you had such a bad time in the bathroom you couldn’t possibly eat anything that was in there beside you while you were having the bad time, and so you discarded the food into the toilet. No way to ever prove that you ate it.” His dry laugh followed him toward the door.

I peeked under the stall to get a look at him, but it was too late to catch a glimpse. I swear I saw a long, black cloak dragging on the floor and passing through the threshold of the lavatory. Not the most sanitary choice of uniform for a custodian, I thought.

I wiped my eyes and stood up from the toilet, pulling my pants and underwear back up before exiting the stall. I immediately noticed that something felt heavy in my pocket, which was strange because I didn’t bring anything with me into the store. I always kept my pockets clean and ready to fill in case they had good samples that day. Upon putting my hand inside, I knew exactly what I grasped. I pulled out an hourglass.

I studied it for a while. It was just like the one holding the sands of my eternal torment that I narrowly escaped, just smaller. I never turned it over to let the sands begin to flow. I didn’t want to find out how much time I had left.

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The Greatest Sandwich Ever Created: the Chicken Finger Supreme Hoagie

Sometimes I miss this sandwich so much it hurts.

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I took a year off between high school and college. I didn’t originally plan on taking a gap year; it happened because I was an idiot. But sometimes things work out for the best, even when they start in a place of stupidity. Which is good for me, because I’m very stupid.

It started because I had no real plans for my future, so I applied to one school and one school only: Penn State, and was accepted into their Engineering Department. I clapped my hands, wiped them on my pants, and figured that was that. Engineering was a respectable profession, and Penn State had a good Engineering program. Did I actually want to be an Engineer? How the hell did I know? I was a child at the time. What I did know was that it sounded good to tell people, “I’m going to Penn State and I’m going to be an Engineer.”

But then I had to take calculus in high school, and I could not understand what the fuck was going on. It was the first time I was stumped by something at school. It actually (and I’m aware this sounds really bad) taught me a lesson in empathy because I used to look at kids who were bad at school and think “what is wrong with you, this shit is so easy.” School had always been a breeze. It was a breeze afterward as well. I just could not, for the life of me, understand calculus. I tried, for about half the year, and then I gave up. I didn’t care anymore, I threw in the towel. The timing of my tap-out led to a hilarious exchange in which my calculus teacher (a man I very much like) accused me in front of the entire class of quitting on math because he believed I thought I was “too cool after my performance in the school play.” This is an accusation I can all but guarantee has never been thrown at anyone before or after this day. Sorry, Mr. Maines, I didn’t think I was “too cool” because of my turn as Sir Harry in Once Upon a Mattress; I just sucked at calculus and decided to lean into the Senioritis. I figured I’d also need to find a new plan for college because I didn’t think you could be an Engineer if you didn’t understand calculus.1 But Penn State was a huge school with a lot of options, so I figured I’d find out what I wanted to do when I got there.

Then I actually got there, and it sucked. Look, maybe you went to Penn State and you loved it. Great for you. I did not. For those of you who don’t know, Penn State is a huge college town surrounded by a bunch of farm land and a whole lot of nothing much else. That’s great for some people, but it reminded me too much of my hometown. A place full of people who loved the football team and drinking and…I don’t even know what else. Should I have maybe visited the school one time before deciding to go there? Would that have clued me into the fact that maybe it wasn’t my cup of tea? Yeah, probably, but like I said, I’m very stupid.

So I went home, where my best friend from high school was waiting, because he also got to the college he planned on attending, looked around, said “nope,” and went back home.2 I get that going home to get away from a place I didn’t like because it reminded me of home seemes a bit strange. But again, I am very stupid.

Which all led to one of the greatest, most fun, dumbest (in the best way) years of my entire life. I won’t go into all the details, but it was a much-needed break for me to figure some stuff out. I was always just concerned about being “good at school” and never really thought about where that would lead or what I actually wanted. Finding out that Penn State was not the place for me and that I didn’t have to stick around in something that wasn’t right for me was big in my development into an adult. Even though it basically led to a year of fucking around and hanging out with my friends.

My mom was concerned, at first. There was a lot of talk about “wasting my potential” or whatever parents say to their kids in situations like this. But then I visited Temple in Philly3, and found the school that felt right for me. She knew I didn’t plan on staying home forever and working at the mall, where I got a job in an Antique store for the year.4 After that things were pretty chill at home, and I didn’t feel bad about fucking off with my friends when I wasn’t at work. I had a plan for the future, and could lean into just enjoying the now.5

So what the hell does any of this have to do with a sandwich?

Well, like I said, much of that year was spent hanging out with my best friend from high school, and a handful of other friends who all went to college near home (or were still in high school.) Many of them lived at home and commuted to school. Others went to Bloomsburg University, a school that, even at her most concerned about my future, my mother forbade me to apply to because it was so close to home it was basically the same as never leaving at all. There was a rumor at our high school that there was some kind of deal with Bloom that if you graduated, you automatically got accepted. It was a real “13th grade” kind of place and I’m glad my mom wouldn’t let me go there, even as a placeholder school for a semester or two.

So we hung out at Bloom, or at one of my friends’ places, and ultimately ended up ordering a lot of food. Like, a ton of food. In both frequency and in volume, it was stupid amounts of food. One of our go-to spots was a place called Crawford’s Bullpen, a place that, until that year, I knew as a small food stand and convenience store near the Little League baseball field where you could grab sunflower seeds, or Big League Chew, or shredded beef jerky in a tin made to look like it was a pack of Skoal. Basically, anything for ball-playing kids to emulate the tobacco-chewing Major League Baseball icons of our youth, and chomp on and spit out these gateway snacks to mouth cancer.

They also had delicious pizza and soft pretzels that were unlike any other pretzels or pizza I’ve ever had. It’s been over 20 years since I’ve eaten them, so I apologize for not knowing how exactly to describe them. The pretzels were close to an Amish-style soft pretzel. They were very light in color, crispy on the outside, soft and bready on the inside, a little bit buttery, and super salty. Not as soaked in butter and golden-brown as an Auntie Anne’s (or Wetzel’s) pretzel, but closer to that than a Philly-style soft pretzel. A search for “Amish soft pretzels” brought me a lot of close-but-no-cigar results, the closest in looks coming from this random Instagram reel (which seems to go really hard on the butter - these pretzels did not seem that buttery.)

The pizza was something they called “Pinky’s style,” which, I think, just meant the sauce was on top of the cheese. The sauce was super deep and rich in flavor, like it used a lot of tomato paste, or was cooked down for a long time, which usually isn’t great for pizza, but it paired perfectly with the creamy cheese blend they used. The crust was thicker and more bready than your typical New York pizza slice, and might have been something close to the pretzel dough, but I’m not sure. There were certainly better options in town for a “classic” pizza, but there was something special about Crawford’s pizza that kept us coming back.

But what really kept us coming back was the Chicken Finger Supreme Hoagie.6 A simple, but unforgettable sandwich consisting of chicken fingers on a hoagie roll with the most delicious secret sauce. This sauce, like the pretzels and pizza, was some kind of custom hybrid recipe that I’ve never experienced anywhere else. What was the sauce? If I knew, I’d probably be dead because I would make it and eat nothing but homemade, bootleg chicken finger supreme hoagies every day until I passed away from happiness7. It was tangy, and sweet, and zippy, and if I had to guess, it was probably equal parts honey mustard and buffalo sauce. I’m just putting that together now, today, 20 years later as I write this. This guy Crawford probably just mixed honey mustard and buffalo sauce (and maybe some BBQ sauce too?) and slapped it on a sandwich, and I’ve been chasing it like it’s the holy grail ever since.

We’d typically order from Crawford’s on Sundays, after playing what we called “Arena Football” all day long. My friends and I were more into basketball than football, but in the winter, we’d play touch football on shoveled-off basketball courts with a few special twists to the rules.8 After the weekly games, we’d head back to my best friend’s house, where we’d order more food than you’d ever believe, and eat until we passed out. We were a handful of 19 to 20-year-old guys, stinking to high hell from playing football all day, bellies full of chicken fingers and pizza and fries and wings and who knows what else, faces full of sauce, passed out on couches and floors while NASCAR played on TV. I’ve never been a NASCAR fan, but it ranks up there with baseball and golf for having on the TV while you’re deep in a Sunday afternoon nap.

The sandwich no longer exists, and I still remember the call to The Bullpen (no longer Crawford’s Bullpen) where I tried to order the Chicken Finger Supreme Hoagie and the person who answered the phone had no idea what the fuck I was talking about. They asked me to explain the hoagie, and told me the establishment recently came under new ownership. I just hung up the phone, defeated, not knowing how to properly explain the magic that had been removed from my life forever. I guess it’s true when they say you can’t go home again. A friend of mine, who was related to Mr. Crawford, later told me that he had a stock supply of the special sauce in his refrigerator and I have never before or after as seriously considered a home invasion and robbery as I did in that moment.

When people9 get all philosophical and sentimental about food, they like to talk about how it connects us to our past, reminds us of simpler times in our youth, or comforts us by reminding us of home. The memory of the Chicken Finger Supreme Hoagie connects me to this very special, very strange time in my life where I floated around with friends, had almost no responsibility whatsoever, and strenghtened bonds of friendship that last to this day. When I say I miss that sandwich so much it hurts what I really mean is I miss those times with those people and cherish the dumbass shit we did together.

Sure, some people use their gap year to backpack through Europe and see the world, I chose to stay in the Coal Region of Central Pennsylvania and fuck around like a high school kid who didn’t have to care about school, or much of anything at all, for a whole entire year. Would riding trains from city to city, reading the classics, and visiting museums and culturally and histoically important places have been more intelluctually stimulating? Probably, but that’s not what I needed at that point in my life. I needed to shake off the stink of feeling stupid because I didn’t understand calculus, and realize that it didn’t matter. I needed to figure out who I was outside of school. I needed to take a fake football league way too seriously. I needed to watch Super Troopers approximately 279 times. I needed fried chicken on a hoagie roll with a secret sauce that was probably just a bunch of other sauces mixed together, and my best friends from home.

1

I didn’t know if this was actually true. I still don’t know if it’s actually true. Maybe I could have been an Engineer.

2

Obviously, knowing he did this made it much easier for me to pull the plug on Penn State.

3

Thank you so much to the multiple friends from my high school graduating class who each reached out to me and said “I heard you left Penn State, come check out Temple, we think you’ll love it.”

4

Something that never really entered my mind, but I can totally see why it would have been a concern for her. Working in an antique store at the mall was rad though. It was quiet. I helped people move heavy furniture about once or twice per day, but mostly just sat at the register and read books.

5

Imagine the concept!

6

Finally, Aaron. Holy shit, it took you long enough to get here.

7

That’s the official cause of death when you die by gluttony, right?

8

For example, if you threw it into the hoop on a kickoff, the game was over, your team won. This was referred to as “A Gamer.” I think we also played games basketball-style, where the first to score X-number of TDs won, but you had to win by 2. So you had to get a stop and score, or if the game was tied, it went into a college football-style overtime. You were also allowed to set picks on passing routes, which is where I, a big man who did not run fast, thrived. It was a lot of fun, and we took it very seriously. There was a website where we posted player stats and bios. There was a system for giving out seasonal awards that was partly based on league-wide voting and partly based on a statistical formula created by the league’s “commissioner.” The league had a commissioner. The season kicked off on Thanksgiving weekend and ran through spring, capping off with the Arena Bowl championship tournament.

9

Or the movie Ratatouille

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I can't go to Sweetgreen with you because I can't cheat on my wife

My partner and I make our own rules. And we draw the line at fast caszh.

Hey team, I really appreciate your daily invitations to have lunch with you all at Sweetgreen, as well as your dedication to eating healthy, fresh mid-day meals every single ding-dang day. At this point, you must be wondering why I have never taken you up on your offer, and I just want to explain myself before things get too weird.

I can’t go to Sweetgreen with you because I can’t cheat on my wife.

No, there’s nothing about their miso-glazed salmon that turns me into an uncontrollably horny monster. The taste combination of spicy broccoli and spicy cashew dressing is not the double-spice full moon that triggers a metamorphosis into a cartoon wolf, howling at the sky and pounding my fists on the table because I can’t stand the pain of my uncontrollable erection.

I’d like to clarify that I said all that stuff does not happen because you are my coworkers, and I want to keep this conversation work-appropriate. With that said, we can get back to my explanation.

You see, all relationships have rules, even if you don’t realize it. For example, “please don’t have sex with anyone else but me, or I will be sad” is a rule that many relationships have, even if it is a rule that goes unspoken. My wife and I believe that we are grown adults who can define the rules of our own relationship and speak them out loud. We even keep them written down and displayed on our Relationship Constitution that hangs in our bedroom and can be amended at any time with a unanimous vote. We do not believe that the spoken and written rules of our relationship need to be in line with the unspoken rules that society has placed on relationships, seemingly by default. For example, the “don’t have sex with other people” rule is not one that we have in our relationship. We can have sex with anybody that we want. We don’t believe in ownership over each other’s bodies. Aren’t we cool and enlightened?

One of the rules that we do have in our relationship is “do not go to Sweetgreen without me, or you are a liar and a cheat,” and that is a rule that I do not intend to break. Sweetgreen is a sacred place for us. It’s where we went on our third date, which, as we all know, is the most important date. For many people, the third date is the sex date, when they have sex for the first time. We had sex before we even started dating each other. When we were both in committed monogamous relationships with other people, actually. We liked the sex with each other so much that we decided to quit dating those other people and start dating each other, plus also dating other-other people, because we knew we were entering into a relationship with another person who had no qualms about having sex with other people behind their partner’s back. So we figured we’d just decide that we’d be okay with that instead of being sad and mad about it when it eventually and definitely happened.

You can just do that, you know. You can just decide that something does not make you sad or mad. You can just say, “It does not at all bother me that the person I love and have chosen to spend my life with is having intimate times with another person, and is sharing parts of themself I will never know, no matter how open I make myself to them.” And then you can decide to make a rule that you are allowed to get sad and mad if they decide to share a Shroomami Bowl with anybody other than you. You can even write it in calligraphy on poster board and frame it on your bedroom wall if you want. That’s called “being an adult.”

I appreciate you saying that I can just invite my wife to lunch at Sweetgreen with the rest of the office gang if I ever want to go, while not violating the sacred agreement we made with each other. But I can’t. Lunchtime is the time when my wife has sex with other guys. So she won’t be able to make it to Sweetgreen. Because she’s too busy having sex with other guys. And I won’t go without her. Because I won’t cheat on my wife while she’s having sex with other guys.

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