Sniff First

Had a long list of favors to do for a friend this week. One was to pick up some things at the grocery store. So I grabbed the cart and started tossing things in. Ripe apples, not so ripe bananas, miscellaneous odds and ends, and milk. Checked out, delivered the groceries and began the drive home.

My cell phone rang before I even get out of the subdivision. When I answered, I heard what sounded like a deranged cat spitting up a Teflon hairball. I thought I recognized the cough, so I waited. I wasn't prepared for what I heard.

"You brought me sour milk!" came the shout thru my buzzing, distorted earpiece. "This milk tastes terrible!"

I learned several things during that brief but animated call. One, you should never laugh uncontrollably when someone tells you that you just gave them a carton of sour milk. They don't respond really well to that. Two, you can't trust the dates that they print on the outside. Sometimes the dates don't represent what's actually on the inside. And three, it doesn't matter what brand of milk you buy. It doesn't matter what's on the label. They can all be sour.

So I turned around, picked up the milk from my friend and drove back to the grocery store. "This milk is sour," I told the lady at the customer service desk.

She told me to go back to the dairy department and get two gallons of the same brand of milk since I had been inconvenienced. But this time I wasn't going to fall for that date or label thing again. I was going to sniff first.

I told the nice lady that I wanted to smell the milk before I took it out of the store. She looked at me as if I had just broken into some kind of ancient Chinese dialect. (She was not Asian.) She obviously didn't understand, so I began to interpret for her: I wanted to smell the milk to make sure that it wasn't sour.

"But the date on the outside assures you that it's not, sir. Plus, the quality control with that brand is second to none."

When she saw me looking at HER as if she had spoken Chinese (I'm not Asian either), she discreetly checked the date on the gallon that I had returned. You know, the kind of furtive little glance that you cast at the GMA nametag when you recognize the face but the name escapes you? Realizing that my old gallon had the exact same date as the two new jugs I was now holding, she decided to check for herself. She turned the plastic cap, opened the container and poured a little milk in the cup next to her register. Just as I began to determine whether or not she was drinking out of her tip jar, the coughing and spitting erupted. Apparently, there was a Teflon hairball virus going around OR maybe that gallon was sour, too!

I learned several things as I watched her wince, spit and wipe her tongue with a rag that she found under the counter. One, you should never even GRIN at someone you've just seen take a big gulp of sour milk. They become quite agitated, even though you were able to stifle your laugh. It's somewhat like trying to hold back a yawn. The animated facial gestures give you away. Two, the date on the outside does NOT assure you that the milk is good, contrary to the advice often given at grocery customer service counters. And three, it REALLY doesn't matter what BRAND is printed on the outside. The label is not foolproof.

What matters is that you make sure the contents on the inside are not stale. The outside must be an accurate representation of what's on the inside. So I grabbed a carton sporting an independent brand. No national advertising, no fancy logo. Just good ol' grade A homogenized milk.

And I sniffed. And sniffed. And sniffed again. (I was trying to remember what sour milk SMELLED like.) Detecting no pungent odor, I took a little sip. (Yes, mom, I drank from the carton, right there in the store.) And it tasted delicious. It was fresh. What it said on the outside matched the quality on the inside. I grabbed a second gallon, checked in with the lady at customer service (who STILL had not forgiven me for grinning and stifling) and headed to my car.

The lady told me a few days later that they had figured out the problem. She said they traced the sour milk all the way back to a faulty refrigerator truck and had thrown out hundreds of gallons of sour milk, leaving them with only an independent brand for about half a day. They had wondered if their customers would be upset but the shoppers just wanted great tasting, good quality milk. And they had been satisfied with the product.

Seems that all dairy cows are pretty much created equal and don't have logos on their backsides (Don't try to tell that to Prada!). Fresh, top quality milk tastes the same in any carton, no matter what the label. And apparently sour milk tastes the same, too (or so I have been told).

I wonder if there is any other business or industry in which this same lesson might apply? Nah! Who needs to sniff first? Besides they don't have a Teflon hairball vaccine yet!

Drink up! You can always spit!

Billy