Champagne Bottle Hits the Ship's Bow

I just went to a wine tasting in Venice, CA on behalf of a wine store my friends own where I feasted about delicious things and drank the wines of Languedoc. Languedoc, one of the most productive wine regions in the world; a region in southern France that produces more wine than the entire state of California. Suck it, Napa. But the wines were merely drinkable. Only three showed distinction, but what they were is not important for today's post. Today is about grocery shopping. I do most of my shopping at Trader Joe's and every so often, Costco, because I'm cheap. And every time I go - it's almost guaranteed - I will find either frozen food on an unrefrigerated shelf or refrigerated food stuffed into the freezer section. They're left by shoppers who either decide they don't need what they chose or they find, say, a more desirous frozen version of what they picked up in the fresh section, so they take it and leave the fresh version in the freezer. To me, this is no different than shoplifting. If you leave a bag of fresh spinach to crystallize in the freezer because you found the cheaper and less salmonella-filled frozen version, this renders the fresh spinach unsellable. It will be wilty and unappetizing. You have just stolen from Trader Joe's. Just because you couldn't walk three aisles over to put it back. You are a selfish dick. So the predicament then is: if I, as an innocent shopper, come across a (as in the case yesterday) a tub of spinach dip that some schmuck dumped in the freezer, do I take it out and put it on the nearby cracker shelf? If I do and no one puts back to be refrigerated, it will go bad. Or do I leave it where it is to freeze? Where it will also go bad, but in a less infectious way. Or do I truck it back to the fresh food section to put it back? Because I have the letters "S" "A" "P" tattooed on my forehead. Obviously, I do the latter. I'm a sap. I admit it. I'm the type of guy who will get dumped and then lend $100 to the girl who just dumped me even though I never got past second base with her. That's a true story. But I rescue this tub of spinach dip not because I want to save Trader Joe's a buck. It's the principle. Don't waste food. Preserve the world's resources. Do you know how many starving kids there are in China? I couldn't give a rat's ass about the economics of it. I'm the dick who, ten years ago, knowingly bought wine from Trader Joe's that was mispriced. It was priced at $12.49 when it retailed for $50. I bought three bottles, went home, re-checked the price on the Internet, then went back and bought the rest of the case. That's a 75% savings. My comeuppance came when every bottle of the wine I opened tasted unremarkable, if not mediocre. The moral of the story is, if you don't want the frozen peas, don't just dump them on the canned peas shelf. Because I will find you! I will make you feel shame! I will make you never forsake a frozen vegetable again in your life. Or let you freeze a fresh one. Walk the 100 feet to put it back, you lazy food waster.