What I Learned About Karma At A Grocery Store In Oakland

They say “variety is the spice of life,” but I’m pretty sure ambiguity is.

There are no instructions on how to live or what’s truly right or wrong. We’re born and then we’re just dropped headfirst into this thing called life. No matter what part of the world your parents forced you to exist in, or what set of customs your specific culture provided you with, we’ve all heard of karma. It’s a universal thing. If you’re unfamiliar, it goes like this: be nice and nice things will happen to you and if you’re not nice bad things will happen to you. But merely existing can test our belief in something as intangible and absurd as the idea of karma. Yet, sometimes, things happen in life that make you wonder if there’s something to it. 

I was recently furloughed from my job. In simpler terms, I was pretty much laid off. Usually I don’t mind being unemployed because almost every job I’ve ever had fucking sucked. Typically unemployment to me was a much-needed temporary pause between ingesting shit sandwiches produced on a conveyor belt of infinite shit sandwiches. This most recent job was different. This was the first time in my life where being employed meant I could afford an apartment. It may not seem like much to some of you, but to me, it was revolutionary. Having a roommate wasn’t a necessity to survive. It was something I could choose. Yes, I had choices for the first time in my life. Fucking wild. I wasn’t breaking my back in warehouses or numbing my mind in call centers anymore. I had a tech job and my broke ass got to peer behind the curtain. 

Not only that, but I was good at my job. In just 10 short months, I was promoted twice. I was a dude with a GED making a six figure income and I was in shock. I also confirmed a long held suspicion: college degrees are a joke. I had people from top Ivy Leagues schools who were completely fucking useless and and I had a guy with just an Associate’s degree who was kind of a crypto savant. 

You could hear the embarrassment and shame in her voice. It reminded me of every time I felt embarrassed by poverty.

But all good things eventually come to an end, and after nearly two years of loving my life at a tech startup, the company I worked for collapsed and I was nervous that I was going to be forced back into the blender that we call blue collar work. I began having flashbacks of small rooms in Vallejo, navigating the Bay Area’s horrible maze of disjointed suburban public transportation and constantly feeling squeezed.

Despite all this, I had saved up some money, not a ton, but enough to survive for a few months. I had vowed to be a miser. I told myself I wouldn’t spend a cent that didn’t absolutely need to be spent. But then I went grocery shopping and something happened…

I was in line at Lucky and an older woman in a wheelchair was in front of me. She had about $50 of groceries, not a ton, but enough to feed herself for the week. She went to pay and her debit card was declined. She tried the card again and the cashier informed her that the card was declined a second time. The lady in the wheelchair responded “I know I have money on the card.” You could hear the embarrassment and shame in her voice. It reminded me of every time I felt embarrassed by poverty. Yet, there was another voice inside of me saying “Abe, you’re only good for 4 months, tops. No one is going to help you if you’re broke. Remember your entire life prior to 2 years ago? Don’t be a hero, dipshit. This is a systemic issue. It’s not your fucking problem.” After an internal argument with myself, I tuned out the money grubbing sociopath that fear had produced and offered to pay for her groceries. She accepted and thanked me. 

It felt nice. I hated seeing older people struggle in this country just to get the bare essentials. I’ve criticized boomers, but we treat our elders like shit. Every time I see someone above the age of 65 greeting me at a WalMart, I can’t help but feel bad.

This article isn’t about me buying groceries, it’s about what happened after. Everything started going my way. Several of the jobs I applied for got back to me. I received two offer letters and I got another writing gig. It’s not my typical stuff, it’s food writing. No radical politics, or anti-rich rants. Just food stuff. Don’t worry, I’ll still write for Stuart no matter what happens. He gave me a chance when others wouldn’t. I was able to get articles published at other publications, but Stuart allowed me to be me. When you’re an artist, that’s a huge gift.

Once again, I don’t have a college degree and a ton of tech jobs are giving me a chance again. And before that incident at the grocery store, it was mostly crickets. There was an interview with this company in Downtown Oakland, but they passed over me and I felt kind of hopeless.

I don’t know if my good luck was karma or just a coincidence, but who cares? If you’re struggling between positive action and neutral inaction, pick positive action because karma might be real, and it’s better to be on the right side of it if it is. 

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