In our mailbox, we found this story about buying tea, But something tells us it’s not entirely about buying tea. Read and judge for yourself (the author wants to remain anonymous, but is known to us).

Just imagine! Your a good customer of the local supermarket where you buy your favorite tea. Not because you have to, not because you’re supposed to, but just because it is a nice place to shop and the tea is is the best. You are a loyal customer.

Then, one day, the shelf is empty. That’s odd, it is always there. Somewhat disappointed you return home. Fortunately, the tea is on stock when you do your next weakly groceries. Delighted you enjoy it even more than ever. Time goes by without delivery issues, but then that day comes again; Darn. No tea. And the week after also no tea.

You decide to go an another day. Still no tea. Once or twice there has been a delivery so you take twice the normal amount home. Enjoy it while you can. But at a given time the tea is out of stock more often than not. You talk to the manager, to discuss the replenishment issues. He says he isn’t sure what the cause is, but he will do his utmost to make sure the tea will be available. For a week or two, things seem to go the right way, but then the problems reoccur.

Very careful, it is not in your true nature, you check out other supermarkets. But every time you want to go in you meet someone you know or you just feel bad about it. Fine. No tea for you then. Until that one day. You are in another town for work. This is your chance! You are well prepared, check the surroundings and when you are sure that no one will ever know, you are brave enough to go in and buy a different tea. This tea is good, different than your usual brand, but good. Still, you feel bad for buying your tea somewhere else. But hey, they should have made sure to have your tea on stock, like you asked them to.

The next time you visit your local shop, you quickly pass the tea shelve. Although it’s a relief that it’s empty, you do feel guilty and you decide to never ever buy tea at a different store. You keep floundering at your local shop. In general all goes well. But the tea … it keeps bothering you. Sometimes there is no tea for weeks or even months and it pisses you off. Talking to the manager doesn’t help any longer. He just shrugs or gets hysterical if you threaten to get your tea elsewhere. “Well, then go get all your groceries elsewhere.” So you stay loyal and do without your beloved tea.

And once every now and then, when you crave for tea … well … you go to another city, so no one notices that you go to a different supermarket. And you enjoy your beloved tea in peace, but with some remorse. Just the other day you almost got in trouble. You took the risk to visit a different local supermarket. Fortunately, all went well and because of that, you do it more often. It takes away the hustle of driving out of town to get some tea. So it becomes a habit to get tea at a different local shop. It’s just to good to not have it. You’re not even feeling guilty towards the manager of your local shop anymore. And whenever there is some tea in his shop, you take that anyway. No one notices.

Pro forma you inquire about the replenishment issues, even though you just know they will never be solved. And the manager? He suspects that you get your tea elsewhere, of course, and he actually doesn’t care. It takes away the whining. Everybody happy. End’s well, all’s well.

PS: You know what is much nicer? Doing your groceries together! But I’ll talk about that another time.