No Fruit For You!

Berkeley, CA, is the surely the land of fruits and nuts, and it looks like they even have their own version of the Soup Nazi - the Fruit Nazi.

BERKELEY -- As most veteran customers know, it takes a pretty thick skin to successfully navigate the Berkeley Bowl, this strident city's most popular grocery store.

Outside, petitioners seeking signatures for ballot measures have come to blows with opinionated residents. In the tiny parking lot, nicknamed the Berkeley Brawl, frustrated motorists have been known to ram one another's cars. At the checkout, people have thrown punches and unripened avocados at suspected line-cutters.

When one shopper was told she couldn't return a bag of granola, she showily dumped its contents on the floor. Culyon Garrison, who works at the customer-service desk, recently had a loaf of bread thrown at him.

The produce emporium -- one of the nation's most renowned retailers of exotic fruits and vegetables -- creates its own bad behavior. Kamikaze shoppers crash down crowded aisles without eye contact or apology for fender-benders. So many customers weren't waiting to pay before digging in that management imposed the ultimate deterrent: Those caught sampling without buying will be banned for life -- no reprieves, no excuses. (Not even "I forgot to take my medication.")

Raphael Breines, who was ejected last year for eating on the premises, said he couldn't decide between two types of apricots, so he sampled both. Security stopped him in the parking lot.

"They treated me like a thief," said the 37-year-old park planner, who was photographed and required to sign a no-trespass agreement. "Technically I was stealing, but I wasn't trying to hide anything. I was just deciding which type of apricot to buy."

Breines, a longtime customer, sent an apology letter, asking to be reinstated. His request was denied.

Store manager Larry Evans says the policy is a fair response to doctors, lawyers and college professors who help themselves to bags of cookies, nuts and vitamins, stick their fingers in pies and guzzle from bottles of sake, assuming the rules don't apply to them.

"There's a sense of entitlement to this town," Evans said. "People think, 'If I want to do it, I'll do it, just try and stop me.' "

Seven years on the job, he said, has given him insight into the city's sometimes sharp social elbows.

"Berkeley residents are angry -- they're mad at the president, the economy, all kinds of stuff. And this is the place where it seems to get released, the local supermarket."

I can't think of a better way to describe the angry left and their attitudes toward other people than what you'll read in this article. Berkeley, which is supposed to be the land of peace and harmony, is teeming with people who are at least one banana short of a bunch and are ready to go bananas at any moment.

How much does this story remind you of "The Mango" episode of Seinfeld:

JERRY: Bad peach?

KRAMER: It's terrible!

JERRY: Did you get that at Joe's?

KRAMER: Yeah, of course I got it at Joe's.

JERRY: That's surprising, his fruit is usually the best.

KRAMER: You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna return this.

JERRY: You're returning used fruit?

KRAMER: Jerry this peach is sub par.

[location: Joe's]

JOE: So what do you want me to do?

KRAMER: I want restitution.

JOE: Restitution? You want restitution? Why should I give you restitution?

KRAMER: Because it's no good.

JOE: When you put that fruit out, that's where it ends for me.

KRAMER: It's still your fruit, you gotta stand behind your fruit.

JOE: I stand behind my fruit.

KRAMER: So...

JOE: Hey, you got a bad peach? That's an act of God. He makes the peaches. I don't make the peaches, I sell the peaches. You have a problem? You talk to him.

KRAMER: You know this whole place is going vrrrrrrrrrrrrt, downhill. I could have come in here last week with a bad plum but I let it go.

JOE: Well let me put a solution for you: do your business elsewhere, I don't want your business.

KRAMER: Oh now you don't want my business.

JOE: No, I don't want your business and from this moment you're banned from the store, you're banned!

KRAMER: But what am I gonna do for fruit?

I'm beginning to think you can find all of life somewhere in a Seinfeld episode.