The HEB grocery store in Texas allowed its customers to take their groceries without paying for them after the power was cut.
The store in Leander is giving hope to families after Texas faces its worst winter storm in ages, leaving many without food and water.
The store allowed all the shoppers there to leave with free groceries.
One customer took to social media to share his experience at the H.E.B grocery store. Tim Hennessy, 60, shared his experience on Facebook. This is what he wrote:
“Today, Deb and I went to our local grocery store called: H.E.B. We wanted to pick up a few things before the next snowstorm and historically, crazy weather we are getting near Austin, Texas.”
He wrote that halfway through their shopping the stores power went out and it was still bright as it was just 3:30 pm. Along with hundreds of other people, they kept shopping and he told Deb to hurry in case they told them to stop shopping and check out.
They picked up milk and other items for other family members too and soon in 15 minutes, an HEB employee asked them to head to the checkout and said: “we’ll check everyone out as quickly as we can as we have a process for these kinds of things”.
They got to a line with 10 full carts in front of them, there were many other lines on both sides and hundreds of people waiting to be checked out. They waited in line for 15-20 minutes and moved up 1-2 slots when they started moving faster and were happy assuming that all the employees must be helping out.
In a few minutes, we were asked to move to the next checkout aisle that was open. We got to the checkout woman and she asked: “Do you have any alcohol?” I said: “No, but if you are giving out drinks, I could use one about now”
She then said: “Please go ahead but we can’t bag anything up for you.” At first, Deb and I were a bit confused and I asked: “How or who do we pay for our groceries?” We probably had a couple of hundred dollars worth of groceries. She said: “Just go ahead and be safe driving home.” Then we noticed the lines of people after the checkout stands proceeding with full carts of groceries all being directed out the store with many employees there to greet us on our way out.
Deb began tearing up which always gets me teared up too – as we could not believe the generosity of H.E.B. and the kindness of that wonderful gesture. They could just as easily asked us all to leave the store as soon as the power went out and asked us to just leave the groceries in the carts. But instead, they allowed people to continue to shop for another 10-15 minutes after the power went out and then let everyone leave the store without so much as a single dollar being asked for from the hundreds of people leaving the store.
This is the America that I know. Despite all the negative we hear/see being reported daily in the news. America and most Americans are still kind, thoughtful, generous, and caring. I salute H.E.B. for the kindness they showed us, the thoughtfulness they showed us, the generosity they showed us, and the caring that they showed us (along with the other hundreds of fellow Texans in the store at that time).
From the bottom of mine and Deb’s heart, we will never forget what you did when no one would have blamed you for taking a different action and when no one expected such a wonderful gesture. With Love Always and Grateful that America is Still the Land I Love, Tim H. P.S. On the way out the door, I turned to the HEB employees and said: “Oh wait…I forgot the Filet Mignon!” We all got a good laugh out of that one.