I watched in bewilderment while a man tried to return butternut squash because he thought it was cheese

Grocery stores are a plentiful bounty. Not just of food and poorly made homewares. That’s the obvious. They’re a cornucopia of stories. Linger in one for a while, and you’re going to stumble across something incredible. On Saturday evening, I went to the store to get some things for dinner. Another man went to the store that night too — to return some squash.

Chapter 1: Denial.

I was pondering plumcots at the time. Ever heard of a plumcot? I hadn’t. It’s a cross between a plum and an apricot, which makes it look like a squat, misshapen fruit that’s wholly unattractive and yet somehow garners a premium price tag. I was going to buy a plumcot, just for the experience, when he strode into the store, eyes set on the customer service desk, a large plastic container of butternut squash in his hands.

A man of no more than 30 had mistaken the diced vegetable for cubed cheese. In the pantheon of grocery store fails and brain farts, this kind of thing happens. Two years ago. I bought a can of condensed milk instead of coconut milk for my Thai green curry after having one of these moments. I only just recovered from it.

There are a great many ways you can take this. The obvious is that you stick the squash in the fridge, laugh at yourself, and go get some cheese. This man said “no.”

The container, roughly the size of a small shoebox, was clearly labeled “butternut squash.” The only place to buy it is in the produce section, which is on the other side of the store from the cheese and dairy. Nonetheless, he was absolutely certain the fault wasn’t his.

Chapter 2: Anger.

It’s a remarkable trait of humans, refusing to ever believe we’re wrong. We’re pre-programmed to always blame someone, or something else — even when we clearly goofed. This natural proclivity was leveraged by some marketing genius, likely decades ago, who coined the phrase “the customer is always right.” That’s not some tacit omission of guilt but rather a recognition that people will ALWAYS blame someone else when they screw up, and this nature can be turned into a selling point.

For every three legitimate complaints someone has, there are 150 expired coupons, misread flyers and general mistakes. Anyone in customer service will tell you this.

Chapter 3: Bargaining.

Despite his clearly being wrong, the very patient employees of the store huddled around the man, trying to devise a solution to the dilemma. In the red corner we have a store, which organizes items into clearly labeled and demarcated departments. In the blue, a man who thought squash was cheese.

This open box of squash will absolutely need to be thrown away if the store takes it back. It won’t be roasted; it will never turn into a soup — an open, contaminated box of squash will be thrown into a dumpster. That’s its lot in life.

Despite the store willing to take a loss just to stop this man from talking, he wants more. He’s still of the belief that the fault is not his and that somehow cubed cheese would be sitting with the precut vegetables in the produce area. He is so insistent that the fault is theirs, that he wants the entire store’s pricing structure to be reworked for him:

It’s here that I almost lost it, still posing as if I was pondering the purchase of plumcots. Somewhere in a house, there was a party waiting for this cubed cheese. Hors d'oeuvres had been derailed when this dude opened the box of squash and became incensed it wasn’t cheese. Every second he spent arguing with store employees was another second his guests went cheeseless.

The man, still utterly wrong, devised what he felt was an amicable solution:

Somehow, in his brain, it’s fair to ask the store to return the clearly wrong item, take a loss on it, give him a new, more expensive item at a cheaper price AND inconvenience more employees by preparing his food for him.

All over a $2.97 box of squash.

There were so many times I contemplated buying two blocks of cheese and handing them to the guy, but you never, ever want to be that person. You might think you’re solving a problem and being nice to the employees, but I promise it will only make things 100 times worse and interject you into the dispute. In short: Never step in the middle of a customer service complaint if you’re a third party.

Chapter 4: Sadness.

You know what I said about being careful if you’re a third party? That applies to employees too:

This well-meaning employee could have been a hardcore trolling cheese man, and if he did he’s a hero. The anger had been building to a crescendo for a while, and by retrieving a whole squash, it only heightened the stupidity of mistaking squash for cheese and everyone knew it:

Do any of us really NEED the cheese? Think about it.

At this point, the customer has been arguing with the customer service desk for 13 minutes. He could have been in and out of the store, with cheese, returned home and likely had most of it cubed by now. However, this box of squash has become the hill he’s going to die on, and things are at an impasse.

The employees did a remarkable job staying cool, proving once again that customer service employees need to be appreciated for their unnatural levels of calm and otherworldly tolerance for stupidity. There is simply no way at 6:05 p.m. on a Saturday to satisfy the man with cheese he can walk out of the store with, pre-cubed.

Chapter 5: Acceptance.

Unable to reach common ground, cheese man left — without his cheese. Snatching the squash off the counter, he said some invective under his breath and stormed out. There weren’t a lot of customers in the store at the time, but those of us who paid attention knew we witnessed something special.

I’ll never know what happened to his party. Whether the guests ever got their cheese. The squash’s destiny is a mystery too. Perhaps it was turned into a soup — at least that’s my hope. If there’s one thing we can learn from this, it’s that butternut squash isn’t cheese, and it will never become cheese — no matter how much we complain about it.

Bless you, cheese man. Wherever you are.