What part of "perishable" do you not understand?

This was a few years ago, but I need to vent and I’m hoping maybe this’ll be cathartic.

The grocery store in NJ that I worked at when Sandy hit lost its power for over a week, just like most of our town and a lot of our county. For the first couple days, all we did was throw out everything that went bad (i.e everything but the non-perishables). And I have to say, just as a shout out to my former employer, they did things right; paid us double overtime and even triple overtime depending on how long we’d volunteer to stay to help get the store ready for when the power actually came back on.

Anyway, a few days after Sandy hit we decided to open up; still didn’t have power and weren’t getting any deliveries in but figured we could at least let people in to buy what we did have. Without power, we obviously couldn’t run the registers or the card machines, so it was cash only. Most people were more than understanding. Gave me faith in humanity, at least for awhile.

Then, I’m taking a quick break outside, and this woman comes up to me.

“Oh, you’re open.”

“Yes, but we don’t have power so we only have non-perishables.”

“But you have milk?”

“No, we don’t have power. We only have stuff that won’t go bad.”

“What about eggs?”

“Uh, no.”

“Starbucks is still closed. Can you at least make coffee?”

“WHAT PART OF WE DON’T HAVE ANY POWER EITHER DON”T YOU UNDERSTAND?”