My conscience cost me $9.07

I wear a watch every day. I rely on my watch every day. So when I glanced at my watch this morning sometime after 9 (but definitely not after 10) only to read that it was 12:20, I knew a visit to W@l-Mart was in my near future.

I left my watch on just because taking it off would no doubt be an uncomfortable experience either because a) I'd feel naked, or b) I'd keep glancing at my bare wrist, waiting for it to tell me what time it was, which could possibly result in someone saying that oh-so-horrid "hair past a freckle" joke in response to my missing watch. Being temporarily misled 50 billion times in one day was definitely the best move.

Immediately after dinner tonight, I headed to W@l-Mart to get my watch battery replaced. I headed straight for the jewelry counter, where a man was waiting behind the counter. I asked him if I could buy a watch battery there.

"Yes," he answered.

"Can you replace the watch battery here too?"

The man asked me what kind of watch I had. "Fossil."

"No, we can't do that," he answered. I don't remember his reason why he couldn't change my battery because instead of listening to him, I was too busy trying to figure out how to ask him if he could just change the battery anyway.

Turns out I didn't have to.

He waved me over to a different area of the counter. I handed him my watch, and he started taking it apart to replace the battery.

"I could get fired for doing this," he told me.

"Really? I won't tell. After all, it is a ... Seiko."

"It is?" he asked, looking up at me from my watch.

"Yes," I said with a wink.

"Really?" he asked me. I glanced down at the back of my watch, which was just below his hands. He was pretty much looking right at it. It had a giant F on it. For "Fossil."

... "No."

He had actually believed me. As he continued working, the man mumbled something that sounded like, "Tell ya what, if you just leave a $5 or $10 bill in one of those brochures over there, I won't charge you for the battery."

"What?!" I asked. Surely I'd heard him wrong. But he repeated just what I thought he'd said.

I had no idea how to respond. "Am I going to get in trouble?"

The man laughed at me. "No."

"Will you get in trouble?" The man told me no one would see it. I was to put the money in a brochure, put the brochure back, and walk off and leave it. At the end of his shift, he'd grab the brochure as he left.

I thought about what he was saying. I could get a free battery, and I'd just have to pay him $5. Not that I had any change; I just happened to have a $20 bill from a trip to the ATM last weekend.

But I couldn't steal.

Then again, it was W@l-Mart. It's not like they'd miss a stupid watch battery.

But it was a dishonest thing to do. A dishonest thing to do at Christmastime. Which is even worse than any other time of the year.

I asked the man how much the battery was. He told me it was $4.07.

I knew that if I left W@l-Mart without paying for that battery, I'd feel bad. Possibly for the rest of my life (After all, I do still feel really bad about the two $1 hair bands I stole when I was in the third grade. My mom asked me where I got them, and I lied and told her I won them in class. The store I stole them from closed most of its stores a few years later.). And $4.07 just isn't worth that strain on my conscience.

I told the man I needed change. "How about I pay for the battery and get change that way?" I asked him.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. That way both our consciences can be clear."

"My conscience is clear," he told me. I bit my tongue.

I paid for the battery, and because I felt obligated, I placed a $5 bill in the brochure. I put it back in place, and I walked off to continue my shopping.

I started to feel perturbed about the whole experience. Sure, the man had helped me by changing my battery, but he made me feel obligated to pay him for doing something other than standing there. Not cool. I wanted to go back to the counter and grab the brochure with my $5 bill in it.

But I didn't. Instead, I grabbed the few items left on my list, paid for them and left the store. Even after all that, I had the nagging feeling like I'd done something wrong.

Leave it to me to pay more than twice the cost of the battery to avoid having a guilty conscience, only to leave with (you guessed it) a guilty conscience. That's the last time I go there to get a new watch battery.