It’s not every day you get asked by another grocery store customer, “You got lots of good stuff. What do you plan to make with the yeast?”

Not much before that, I’d snuck over to the grocery store near my house before work for a few supplies and an excuse to buy a coffee at the in-store coffee shop.

On my list were ingredients for the Detroit-style pizza I planned to make that weekend, including yeast. I swear to you this is going somewhere.

The store is quiet at that hour, even on Super Bowl Sunday. It was just the way I like it: uncrowded. I am in this store a lot. On more than one occasion I’ve walked away from self-checkout without grabbing the cash I’d withdrawn. One time someone turned it in, and the other they took my word because I’m in there so often the manager recognized me. If I was running scams, I’d have exhausted my repertoire by now.

When I got in line at the one check stand that was open, I struck up a conversation with the cashier. I knew from a past smash-and-gab store run that he had a son who is good friends with my friends’ sons. I asked if they still hung out, and next thing I knew, we learned we both had lived in Georgia at points in our lives, him in southern Georgia, me in Athens where I’d attended the University of Georgia. His wife’s family was from Miami, where I was born. We had lots to discuss.

Eventually, he hands me a receipt and we say goodbye to each other. I walk away feeling chipper about some human connection before I interface with a computer for the next 8 hours.

I headed immediately over to the coffee counter. The real reason I ever go to the store in the morning: a half-sweet oat milk mocha, sometimes without whipped cream depending on how healthy I am pretend aiming to be that day.

Wallet in hand, I got in line, peeked inside, and didn’t see the cash. Gears started turning. I got out of line so I could focus on the series of thoughts that began and ended with, “Did I pay?” and “I don’t think I paid.”

I head out to the parking lot feeling weird, in doubt, positive I didn’t pay, positive I couldn’t have left without paying. It’s not like I didn’t go through the line and watch him ring up my stuff.

I did what I usually do in most ethical, logical, logistical, monetary or philosophical events or crises: I messaged my wife.

“I just had the weirdest experience at Safeway! I’m walking out and can’t remember paying. I was talking away,” I wrote. You know the rest. “I feel like I didn’t pay. I’m looking at the (bank) app, and I don’t see a transaction for Safeway.”

I checked the bag I plopped the receipt into after he’d handed it to me. It was for $17, a bill that included a pair of headphones that I’d seen from the guy ahead of me. Definitely not my bill. Maybe the previous guy had said no to a receipt, and my cashier hadn’t torn it from the register?

My wife hadn’t replied, and I considered my options. I would be lying if I didn’t admit thinking for a moment how nice it would be to get $150 worth of groceries for free.

Instead, I went back in and as I approached his check stand, heard my cashier talking about something that sounded a lot like what we’d just been through. He looked over at me, and I said, “I think I didn’t pay?”

A manager got involved, and we all sort of talked at once, but the point was I hadn’t paid.

The woman behind me paid for them, my cashier told me. That was nice of her, I thought.

The manager asked me to step over to customer service, where the clerk was trying to straighten things out with the woman who had been behind me. It turned out that my cashier had just continued to ring up her stuff with mine, since my transaction hadn’t been closed out — not that she paid out of the goodness of her heart.

While the staff conferred about what had happened and how to proceed, the woman complimented my groceries and asked what I was going to make with the dry yeast. I told her about the deep-dish pizza I was going to make.

Soon enough, the staff reimbursed her and asked me to go through the line again. So I went out to the car, brought them back in and began unbagging and placing my items on the conveyor belt.

My cashier thanked me for coming back in, and said they’d have no way of knowing who I even was till I came back in again. I doubted that, given the number of security cameras everywhere these days, plus I had put my phone number in, and I mean, we knew people in common. He joked to his coworker that he was going to have to go through training again.

I think he paid a lot more attention to the transaction my second time through. As I later texted my wife, “You can get really caught off guard when the out of the ordinary occurs.”

I finally got myself a coffee. When I was paying, the barista asked if I wanted to add a pastry for 13 or something cents.

That happened again a couple of weeks later, so I know it was just some kind of promotion. But on the day I almost stole my groceries, it felt like instant karma coming to high five me for my honesty, and I asked for a piece of the banana walnut bread.