Grocery Store Blues

I just got back from my local grocery, where I bought out the whole place (you know how they say you shouldn't shop for food when you're hungry?). I bought salad and pasta ingredients galore. Here in Deutschland, they don't bag your groceries for you. In fact, you have to pay 10 cents extra for each plastic or paper bag you take, so most folks bring their own reusable cloth bag. And there's not much room at the end of the check-out counter for bagging your groceries. I think you're supposed to bag them at the same time that you're paying, but I haven't caught on to this complicated maneuver yet.

Back to the story: So I've paid and am frantically stuffing things into my reusable cloth bag (because there's a long line of hurried people coming through the check-out after me), and a guy walks up and starts asking the check-out woman where his bottle of wine is (I don't understand him well enough to know what exactly he's looking for, but I can tell he's looking for something). I reach into my bag, find a bottle of wine that I didn't buy, and hand it to him. Of course, I hadn't intended to steal it, but I was in such a rush that I just grabbed everything at the end of the checkout register and stuffed it into my bag as quickly as I could. You shoulda seen the "thief!" accusatory look on his face (and the equally shocked/surprised look on the face of the check-out woman, with whom I've struck up a friendship). And there was 0% chance of explaining this complicated situation to either of them (with my limited German and their likely non-existent English). So all I could do was smile, excuse myself, and walk away. "Entschuldigung... danke... tschüss.." [Excuse me... thanks... bye].