“Please go,” said the man in the tie, ushering us out through the automatic doors. Shuffling nearby were two checked out looking cops; the supermarket manager evidently feeling a possibility of violent protest from the old man and me. Without making a scene, we left and crossed the sprawling parking lot to the Volvo ‘88 sedan, and peeled out onto West Shepherd. We were banned, for life.

I was eleven that summer in 2003, and I was living with my father in Houston, Texas. It was he who introduced my best friend’s dad, the old Duffer I called him, to an enormous Whole Foods flagship store in the center of the city; a particular location which, every Saturday, had a big cookout in front of the store, with several supersized grilling contraptions smoking away. The cheery grillmasters shared out brisket and sausage fresh off the grill to, presumably, customers entering and exiting the store. In the palatial grocery market itself, there was an abundance of free sampling tables and kiosks, in every section of the store. It’s inconceivable that any Whole Foods location would engage in such a practice in the 2020s; it was astonishing even then.

The whole mood of the market on Saturdays was jubilantly open and trusting. 

My buddy’s old man was a disgraced immigration attorney, someone who’d not long before this period had been living well. He’d grown accustomed to that milder life, and then hit the skids bad; losing family and career, sinking into depression and drink. He was free of the hooch when I started tagging along with him on his various adventures however. A dry drunk his ex-wife called him.

The old Duffer was pretty hard up financially, and was usually eating the simplest, most affordable meals. When he found out that there was a gourmet food sampling extravaganza every Saturday at this place, he made it a routine to drop by every weekend. The duffer couldn’t afford anything at Whole Foods, but had to look as if he were shopping.

We had a stratagem, to avoid detection. My best bud never came along on the occasions; he was busy drifting into juvenile delinquency. The old buff walked around with a basket, putting in a bunch of bananas or some boxes of flaxseed to make out like we were just popping in to pick up a few things. Obviously, you wouldn’t fill a cart load of goods and ditch it by the checkout lines. 

A key element of successfully sampling without buying was to fill up at the samples in a leisurely style. While harpooning the smoked turkey sausage, we also made ample room for other samplers to get into the offerings. It was a wise strike to make conversation or comment to another sampler, to give an impression of peerage, of a common status as shoppers. 

And since we always hit the store on Saturdays around noontime, we had the advantage that there were always plenty of hungry sampling actual customers to engage with and provide a necessary distraction to cover our looting spree. In this way we could circle the store several times, seemingly completely unnoticed.

We never came on the raids looking unclean. We presented well. or apparently unfortunate, but well washed and clean cut. Often when an employee was nearby, and not very busily engaged, the old man would pluck an item off of a shelf and pretend to study the nutritional facts, looking over the packaging and reading the list of ingredients; or hover over some cheeses at the refrigerated cranny of imported wedges, perusing the impressive array of various goat’s cheese. Wherever we might be found, it would always appear that we were especially attracted to that specific section with intentional purpose.

After a couple months, the Duffer got bolder and began taking liberties at the salad bar. Evidently, it resembled a sampling station enough to justify a reasonable confusion. There were olives of many varieties, and couscous. There were little plastic cups and spoons. What were they there for if not for sampling? How do I know if I can take the olives stuffed with habanero if I don’t try it first? 

Pretending we didn’t know what the hell they were talking about was a solid defense for us; as though it was such an absurdity what was being suggested we were simply disbelieving. That worked once, at least.

The employees behind adjacent specialty goods nooks were always busy during these bustling Saturday early afternoons. The staff at the checkout positions were likewise continuously occupied. And the store was like a grand opera house, with many aisles and bustling prosperous Houstonians. The hands of the workers and eyes of the management were constantly preoccupied with one thing or another to notice our pilfering

The management or office space of this particular store branch was parallel to the shopping ground floor, taking up an entire second floor of space. It seems like they must have some unthinkable series of operations to necessitate an office that size, for a grocery store.

Eventually they caught on, and we were confronted by some yuppie stick boy in a tie. Were the offices canvassed with photocopies of us looting the sample stations? 

Well, we were fed up with them too, treating us some savage bums, scavengers and undesirables. The idea of the likes of us on those crime stopping cameras. It was customary for us to be eating the dregs of food; and we entered that store with empty stomachs and exited full, like we’d had a three-course gourmet meal. We took them, and it was well enough to be done with them. Now the horn o’ plenty was empty. 

A little while later we tried to recreate the scheme on a thoroughly midline, chain supermarket: Kroger’s. That was unsuccessful. It left a morbid image branded on my mind, an unforgettable vision of the abyss; a tunnel of fluorescent lighting and tall receding supermarket shelves: catching a glimpse of the old man, Count Dracula in the daytime. The duffer was tearing a bag of nuts open and dumping the peanuts into an empty sampling basin; then he began to eat. I didn’t partake. The best was not yet to come.