LACEY – You could say that this was a case of a customer’s guilt catching up to them or perhaps more correctly, it had ‘ketchup’ to them.
That’s what happened at the Perkins restaurant in Lacey Township when a customer admitted that they had removed a bottle of ketchup from the restaurant several weeks earlier.
The customer faced the mustard however and left an unidentified note recently explaining that they felt the ketchup bottle theft had left them with a bad taste of karma.
Since the time the seized the bottle of Heinz ketchup, someone had struck their car causing damage and that was just the beginning of other bad occurrences.
In an effort to break the curse of bad karma, the customer decided to not only leave an anonymous note fessing up to what they had done but they also left two brand new bottles of ketchup apparently purchased from a local Walmart, as receipt was also left behind, to make up for their crime.
While the reason given for the ketchup swipe was described as an act of being “risky” by the person who described themselves as a “square” they did sign the note as “an awful person.”
Maria DiLeo has been the owner and operator of the township Perkins restaurant since it opened 12 years ago. She said Friday that as far as missing ketchup bottle goes, “I never gave it a second thought. I just thought one of our staff tossed it out after it was empty and forgot to replace it.”
“I feel sorry for her and I hope her luck has changed,” DiLeo said explaining that while the note did not suggest a gender, “no male has good handwriting like that.”
DiLeo said that she and her staff almost missed the Walmart bag with the two bottles of ketchup in it but once they discovered it they knew they had to share it so DiLeo posted it to a local township Facebook page, Lacey Chatter.
“This world needs a little good news and I felt bad for her after reading that her car was crashed into and she had other bad luck. If that is the worst thing she ever does, good for her. People take our Splenda packets all the time. I hope her luck has changed and she buys a lottery ticket,” DiLeo said.
DiLeo believes the customer is female and that she is local given that her restaurant is in Lacey and the ketchup bottles were purchased at the township’s Walmart. As to whether she will ever get to meet the customer the restaurant owner said, “I hope so. It would be nice.”
