Nigel's Beer

Sylvia from Melissa grocery

Most mornings I walk down to Melissa grocery to shop.  I return some of Nigel’s beer bottles because when you do, you get a discount on the beer you buy.  As you walk in the door, there is someone standing by a table that takes your empties and they write the number in a book.  When you check out, you tell the clerk how many bottles you returned, she calls over that number to the return table, they verify that they have an entry for that number of bottles, and then the clerk charges you less for the equivalent amount of bottles.  Quite a system.  A new law went into effect about buying alcohol last weekend, or to be absolutely correct, a new law was passed ages ago, but they only started to obey it last weekend.  You can only purchase alcohol between the hours of 10am and 7 pm, Monday through Saturday.  When we went grocery shopping at SPAR last Sunday there was a guard standing before the liquor section of the store not letting anyone by. 

I usually walk to the local store in the morning before it gets too hot.  Yesterday I returned three beer bottles and I thought they acted a bit strange, but ignored it.  As I was shopping, I put three new bottles of beer in my cart along with my other purchases.  Sylvia, the really nice clerk, whom I have never seen out from behind her counter, walked up to me and after saying a very pleasant good morning, leaned in to tell me in a low voice that I couldn’t buy the beer yet as it was only 930am and could she put them back in the cold case for me. We arranged that I would buy the other things in my cart and return after 10am to buy the beer.

I wandered around the area, looking at other shops, and returned to the grocery store just before 10am, got the three bottles of beer and as I walked up to her register, I asked if it okay to buy the beer now.  A group of men, who always seem to be hanging around, roared with laughter and assured me it was after 10am! Not sure what they thought – maybe that I was desperate!!