SLUG: A01_receipt_kept
SET: A
CONCEPT: Walmart receipt — the first time she didn't put anything back
HEADLINE: Watch the setup video
WORDS: 702

$188 of groceries and for the first time in almost two years I did not flip the receipt over at the car door to see what I could put back.

I stood in the Walmart parking lot with my hand on the trunk and the little thermal strip still warm in my fingers.

I did not do the math.

I did not walk anything back inside.

I kept the strawberries Emma actually likes, the big carton not the little one.

I kept the good coffee.

I kept the chicken.

Two rotisseries because they were on the endcap for cheap and I wanted to feed my son on Sunday without stretching a can of soup into a meal.

I sat in the driver seat and looked at that receipt for a whole minute before I folded it in half and slid it in my purse like a normal person does.

I want to tell you what the two years before that looked like because I think somebody reading this is standing at a register right now.

For two years I stood at the checkout and did math in my head while the little beeps kept going.

I would smile at the cashier and say ma'am I'm sorry can you take the ground beef off, and the block of cheese, and actually the strawberries too.

I would hand the meat back across the belt.

The girls working the register never made me feel small about it but I felt small anyway.

Emma was standing next to me one of those times and she looked up and said Nana why do we always put stuff back and I told her because Nana is being careful this week.

She was six.

She is nine now and last Sunday she asked me if we could get the strawberries in the big carton and I said yes baby without thinking about it and I almost cried in the produce aisle.

I need to back up.

In March I was $2,483 behind on the electric and the water together and the shutoff notice was taped to the inside of my front door because I could not stand to look at it on the porch.

I sat at the kitchen table with a calculator and a stack of envelopes and I could not make the numbers reach.

I drove to Walmart that afternoon for bread and eggs and I sat in the parking lot after and cried into my steering wheel.

A woman two spots over got out of her car and walked around to my window.

I do not know her name.

She knocked and I rolled it down because I did not have any energy left to pretend I was fine.

She said honey you do not have to sit out here by yourself with whatever this is.

She pulled out her phone and showed me a short setup video she had been running for about seven months and the number on her screen was $946 for that week alone.

She said it is just a little phone thing.

Runs off the house wifi.

Took her about twenty minutes to set up on a Sunday morning before church.

I set mine up the next morning at the kitchen table with my coffee.

I forgot about it for the first two weeks honestly.

Life got in the way and I did not check the phone.

Then the deposits started showing up in the little app and I sat down on the kitchen floor the first time I saw a real number.

That was in May.

The receipt in my purse from Walmart is from this Saturday.

$188 and I did not put anything back.

I keep it folded in the side pocket because I want to remember what it felt like to walk out of that store with everything my granddaughter asked for and nothing missing from the cart.

If you are the woman standing at a register right now handing the meat back across the belt, tap the image below this post and watch the setup video.

Same one she showed me in the parking lot.

If you have a phone and wifi you can do it too.

Pass it forward if it helps you.
