Get your own
 diary at DiaryLand.com! contact me older entries newest entry

2000-07-18

Last night I went to the groovy health food gourmet grocery. I have a love-hate thing with that place; I like their food but I hate how expensive it is and this kind of attitude about the place. I feel like a cliche there, sometimes.

I try to only buy things there that I can't get elsewhere, because of how insanely overpriced it is. They have sneaky practices, too, such as charging by the pound for produce that's ordinarily priced by the item, such as cantaloupes, making it hard to tell what kind of deal you're getting.

Anyway, last night I went to get some sesame oil because I wanted to try to replicate this tofu dish they sell in the prepared-foods section. I noticed they had some good-looking blueberries for $2.29 a pint. A few hours later, at home with B, I happened to glance at the receipt and see

BLUEBERRIES $2.79

I was incensed. I called to double-check that I'd read the sign correctly. The guy went and looked, came back and told me $2.29. Of course, it's only fifty cents but the thought that every pint of blueberries they sold all day rang up fifty cents over just enraged me.

I recalled that the last time I went there I bought boneless chicken breasts of the non-hormone-laden variety. The little sign in the case read $4.99 and when the butcher guy weighed my package, I noticed the three I'd asked for weighed exactly 2.5 pounds, so I was waiting for the price to read exactly $12.50. Only the label that the scale spit out read $13.73 because it calculated the price based on $5.49 a pound. I pointed it out to the guy, who apologized and repriced the chicken.

In light of the two incidents, I started suspecting an actual strategy of systematic overpricing. How many people pay attention to such things? No one on any kind of budget would be shopping there in the first place.

So today I went back to get my fifty cents and to pick up, as it happened, more chicken breasts. First I went to the butcher case. The boneless breasts were now marked $5.49. Then I went to the blueberry display. The same ones from last night were now marked $2.99.

previous - next

join my Notify List and get email when I update my site:
email:
Powered by NotifyList.com