Crackerjack prize: $10,000

What a treat to buy a box of crackers from Whole Foods and open it to eat it with your lox and organic cheese, but when you reach in the box for some crackers you pull out $10,000 in cash.  Wonderful!  This should be enough for an entire month of groceries at Whole Foods.

Debra Rogoff in Irvine, Ca. did just this.  But instead of going on a shopping spree for for Juicy Couture sweatpants and Gucci sunglasses, she called the cops, fearing that it might have been drug money... because you know how those drug cartels like to use boxes of crackers at Whole Foods to make the drop off.

It turned out that an old woman from Lake Forrest, who lost trust in her bank, had stuffed her life savings into a box of crackers for safe keeping, but had a senior moment and mistakenly returned it to Whole Foods.  

It's not so strange that returned items are placed back onto the store shelf, if they are still resalable.  Some people might disagree, but an opened box of food doesn't sound like it should go back on the shelf.  Yes, I grew up in a generation fearful of razor blades hidden in apples, water bottles laced with cyanide and pop-up safety caps standard on all bottled drinks, so I might harbor more fear, real or hoax, than the average Whole Foods shopper (doubt it).  But, didn't anyone at Whole Foods catch the opened box of crackers before replacing it onto the shelf?  

We must be reminded that employees at Whole Foods are also human, even if they sport nose rings and dreads.  They might love the earth and are one with mother nature, but they don't necessarily love their job... or you, for that matter.  They are, after all, the front line employees of the super-grocery chain, and while they greet you at the checkouts with a fractional smile, behind them exists the deception and hypocrisy of their employer, by which work moral can be wounded enough that an opened box of crackers slips by.  Ever wonder what else slips by?   Like hand washing after using the bathroom?  It's how unhappy hippies roll, you see.

But back to the $10,000 in the box of crackers.  Mrs. Rogoff felt bad about keeping the money, so she returned it.  The old woman from Lake Forrest got every penny of it back.  But not a penny of reward was offered to poor Debra.  So now Debra felt really, truly bad about not buying herself the Juicy Couture and Gucci.