I usually shop at two stores for our groceries. I was shopping in the second store, Sprouts, and pretty much done with my shopping and about to pay, when there was a huge pop and all of the lights and cash registers went off. The store was dark, but not too dark to see, and I said to the stockperson who was on my aisle "Can we pay if there's no power to the registers?"

But just then we heard the manager shouting from the front of the store to come to the registers with everything we had in our baskets. I figured maybe they had some alternate system.

There were probably a total of 20 shoppers in the store at the time, and we all headed to the registers. Two Sprouts employees who had been outside collecting carts said that the transformer had "blown up." They said it sounded like a huge pop, and the female employee hit the ground she was so scared, then the transformer started smoking.

Anyway, I got to the front, the guy at the register bagged all my groceries (without scanning them obviously) and then smiled and said "Merry Christmas! Our manager said everything is free!"

Free groceries! I felt bad for the store... but it was a really good PR move (let's say 20 people time maybe $40 each average is not actually that much for the store - they'll probably lose more from spoiled inventory, and maybe their insurance will cover it?).

When I went to my car, I saw the exploded transformer - it was all black. Glad that no one was hurt. And the traffic lights were out up to the next major street.

But, let's return to that very welcome Christmas present - free groceries!

I can't tell you exactly how much the groceries would have cost (about $30) but I will definitely have extra money in our grocery budget left over this month that I can use to pay down the mortgage.