I think you just talked to a lazy person. It is never wrong to go through the right channels as long as you go as far up the chain of command as possible. The other author may have bypassed that step, but by getting permission you may just get extra benefit from it - possibly even a longer shelf life. Wegmans likes to do stuff that ties them to the community, as ebenstone said.

And for the record, I miss Wegmans since I moved south.