vignette from a grocery store

Yesterday, while perusing the produce in a major grocery store chain in Western WA, I remembered we were about out of bananas. As I approached the almost empty display of bananas, I noticed an employee throwing hands of bananas into a trash box. Bananas that were fresher than the ones becoming banana bread fodder on my counter.

Each cluster of fruit hit the cardboard box with a muffled thump and I cringed in response. Thump, cringe. Thump, cringe. Thump, cringe.

I asked the guy who was tossing his bananas if they were just being trashed or given to a food bank or what. He replied, 'We throw them away - because who would buy them?"

I pointed out that I would, for the aforementioned banana bread...or there was always the food bank (This is why someoneElse always ends up laughing at me when we go shopping together.)The banana guy just looked at me in disbelief and went back to tossing out perfectly good bananas.

Thump, cringe.

Thump, cringe.

And we wonder about the state of food in this country. 

Now I must find the number of the local food bank and ask them is they would please call these bozos and see if they can get free, perfectly good, barely freckled bananas. You know, the ones that nobody would buy.