Worth Every Penny

Earlier this year, I committed myself to donating $100 to a cancer-related charity. As of yesterday, I still hadn’t gotten around to it. (I mean, there’s still almost three months left to do it…)

We stopped at Safeway on our way home last night to grab a few items. The predominant color in our store right now is pink. Pink ribbons. Pink balloons. Pink signs. Pink shirts on the checkers. They’re in the middle of one of their periodic fundraising partnerships, this time with Susan G. Komen for the Cure. We quickly collected our $20.78 in groceries and checked out. Our checker, Tammy, asked us if we’d “like to donate a dollar for breast cancer research”. She sounded very enthused. I have no idea how many times she had asked that question over the last two weeks, or how many people had said, “Sure.”

I said, “Actually, I’d like to donate a hundred dollars.” I looked at the little keypad that was asking me the same question. It had buttons for $1, $3, and $5. I tapped “Other…”. I punched in a one followed by four carefully-counted zeros and pressed enter. A few seconds later, Tammy snapped back to reality. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “You were serious! I thought you were joking…” Her voice trailed off for a second as she punched a few buttons on her console.

She picked up the phone and activated the PA system. I had forgotten this part. I ducked my head, slightly embarrassed, as she announced to the store, “Thank you for the $100 donation to breast cancer research on checkstand three.”  The girl on five looked up from her work and shouted over to her, “What? Are you serious?” Tammy barely had time to get a quick “Totally!” over her shoulder before her phone started ringing. “That would be the store manager.” The side of the conversation that we heard was, “Yeah… uh-huh… in your face!” I’d love to know what the other end of the conversation was.

I don’t expect there to be any problem with taking the charitable deduction for it. It was at Safeway, sure, but it was for Susan G. Komen for the Cure. I’ve got the receipt, and it’s clearly marked. But even if I can’t, I made a couple people’s night. It was worth it. After all, I saved $3.31 by using my Safeway Club Card.