On a recent visit to Trader Joe’s, Sammi Foster stocked her cart so high that people around her wondered if she thought items in the store were free and they had just missed the memo or something.
“It was so much,” says Ramona Bulgari, another customer who witnessed the event. “I wondered if there some kind of promotion or if they were filming an episode of Supermarket Sweep or something? Were we being punk’d?”
“I was worried it was some kind of prank and she was gonna leave it for us to put away,” says Chandice, who works in the store. “If so, that’s not fucking funny.”
“We’re not really allowed to say anything so I just assumed she was shopping for a second family or something. When she asked about oat milk I realized she was really shopping for herself. That’s when we all got kind of worried.”
And shop Foster did, strolling her cart through the store for upwards of 75 minutes, pulling items from each and every aisle until her cart was bursting.
“I guess I’ll have to come back for paper towels,” she murmured to herself as her cart overflowed.
People watched her carefully as she approached the checkout to see if and how she would pay.
“I thought she was gonna pull out a blank check or some kind of VIP store card like maybe she won free food for life in a settlement against the company,” says Josh Anderson. “But she paid with a normal debit card.”
Questioned on the matter, Foster was cagey.
“What do you mean? This is only five days worth of food for my family.”
