I SAY POTATO, AND YOU SAY . . . YAM

By

Deborah M. Piccurelli

 

            Yes, I’m writing about potatoes. More specifically, sweet potatoes. Not yams, but sweet potatoes. Believe it, or not, many people do not know that there is a difference. There are white ones, and there are red ones. While peeling them, a sweet, almost floral fragrance is released into the air. Heaven.

            I love sweet potatoes, which I hear are the most nutritious vegetable on the planet, so I constantly buy them. One thing that distinguishes them from yams is their price. At most supermarkets in my area, yams are selling for around a dollar per pound. Sweet potatoes, however, are anywhere from one-and-a-half to two times the price. This is where I run into a problem and what this essay is really about.

            I am the sort of person who would be tormented for life if I did something illegal or morally wrong. When I buy a few pounds of sweet potatoes and take them to the cashier, I am automatically charged the price for yams. As I became aware of this, I tried my best to correct the situation. First, I tried telling the cashier that these are not yams, they are sweet potatoes and quote the real price. They’d put the bag on the scale and punch in a code. Nope, they’re coming up as yams. “Don’t worry about it,” the well-meaning worker would tell me, assuming they’re doing me a favor, and in spite of my protests. What was I to do? Remain in line haggling away my precious time, and the time of the people waiting behind me? Run to customer service and rat out the clerk who didn’t know their product and made no effort to find out about it? This was my dilemma, not anyone else’s, so I would return home determined to come up with a solution. Before I could, though, the same scenario was repeated with several different store personnel. After much thought and seeking advice from others, I decided to alert the produce manager of the situation, hoping he would somehow make sure the correct code was entered into the store’s computer system, and all cashiers knew what it was. So that’s what I did, and he assured me he’d take care of it.

            For a few weeks, things went smoothly. Some people seemed to know right off. Others, who were possibly new hires, would check with customer service and all would be well. But then suddenly the situation ended up back where it started. Even if a cashier tried different codes, the sweet potatoes still came up as the price of yams. You might say, “Maybe sweet potatoes were on sale that week.” Well, for some reason, they are rarely on sale, and never for a dollar per pound. I only wish. But then the same thing began to happen at other stores where it never did before. Frustrated, I wondered what to do. It seemed that no matter how hard I tried to do the right thing, I was thwarted at every turn.

            Finally, I did the only thing I could do: I gave up. This has been going on for months, so it’s not as if I’d done so too easily. Many would say I was foolish to try in the first place. But at the very least, I can rest easy knowing my heart is in the right place.

            And now, best of all, I can count it as a gift from God.