I donated to diabetes foundation and all I got was a...WHAT??!!?!?

I love going to the grocery store. There's something about the order of the aisles, the way that everything has its place and is in an order. It's one of my happy places. I love it. I also am really interested in the ways that nonprofits can work with grocery stores because the grocery stores are so willing to support local causes and because everyone in the community has to go to the store.

Last year, I was in the store, and at the check out, the cashier asked me if I would like to donate $1, $5 or $10 to a diabetes foundation (I'm not sure of which one). She then told me that if I donated I could choose a bottle of water or a...wait for it....

wait for it....

a cupcake. A beautifully decorated cupcake. Frosting 1/2 inch high, yellow CUPCAKE. For donating to a diabetes foundation. WHAT?!!?!

Granted, the colors of everything all matched well. The cupcakes looked delicious, but who made this decision? I am sure that the diabetes foundation is grateful for having such a prominence in the grocery store and for all of the donations from the customers, but someone is probably banging their heads against their keyboard for giving such an incongruous gift for the donations.

Somewhere, someone wasn't communicating. Perhaps the diabetes foundation didn't have support for this type of donation, or the grocery store just assumed that the cupcakes had worked before, for other causes, so it would assuredly work for this one.

I know that this was an oversight, and this type of thing can happen to any of us, but it's something that we should all be aware of. Asking a co-worker to check over our work, treating each situation individually, and looking at it from an outsider's perspective may help to avoid something like this.