Grapeswipers

I saw a guy recently with absolutely no pangs of conscience or decency that "samples" produce, presumably to see if it is any good. That's just plain stealing, yet these thieves don't seem to recognize the purloining as shoplifting. You can thump, smell, and squeeze the mellons (good times, good times), calibrate the relative head sizes of lettuce, and use any sense you want other than taste to reasonably test the merchandise (no core samples, for instance), but you can't eat the food without paying for it. It's Russian Roulette with the grapes, pal. You buy them and hope they're not sour. That's why it's such a great idea for supermarkets to provide produce samples to the public to reduce the considerable risk in buying fruit in particular. But if the samples are not offered, it's not up to you to decide that you can provide your own samples. And no, it's not a cost of business, it's not expected by the supermarket, and not everyone does it. If you do, you're just a penny-ante thief.