Wouldn't You Know It?
By Gus Kilthau
@Ceerios (4698)
Goodfellow, Texas
January 20, 2017 12:21pm CST
Wouldn't You Know It? -
All of my Mill Otter (MyLotter) friends understand that moving from a long-term residence to another home is generally a large pain - sorting through all of your accumulated belongings, packing, lifting, toting, tossing, giving away - and knowing that you are really soon going to have to learn lots of new things -
- one of which is where to find the grocery stores in the new neighborhood.
I was in the before-moving neighborhood, going home from some work stuff yesterday . All of a sudden I saw a new store that had evidently just moved in on a nearby street. It was one of a large chain of "no-frills" grocery stores that my bride and I had long wanted to see come into the area - a big-enough store to have everything on the shopping list - and pricing that leaves all of the other grocery stores in the dust,
I parked the truck in the lot and went on inside just to take a look around. By the front door to the place was a lineup of grocery carts. I didn't need a cart (nothing on my mind to buy at the moment) and, anyway, to get the use of a grocery cart you had to stuff a coin into the slot to unlock the cart from its holding stand. The sign said that you would get your coin back when you returned the empty cart to its stand. (That's a pretty good way for the store people to avoid the expense of having to chase empty shopping carts all over their parking lot, right?) No coin- no cart - but, into the store I went.
Now then, I am a veteran of many trips to the old grocery stores on orders from the boss lady, like "pick up a gallon of whole milk on your way home today." So I am used to the pricing of the usual stuff. Like, a jug of milk goes for a bit more than $3.50 around here. (More than a gallon of gasoline...)
I knew that I would not get into too much trouble with my bride if I brought home a jug of milk, so I grabbed up a gallon of milk by its handle and, by then having seen enough of this new store to suit myself, I went to the pay-up counter and paid for the thing. It cost $1.78. I figured that the cash register lady had screwed up and undercharged me by almost half. Nope. $1.78 was the right price. I should have known that, for most everything in the store that I had looked at was similarly lower in price than we had been charged by our usual stores.
Wouldn't you know it that right now we are about to move almost 15 miles from here?
Maybe this grocery store company will follow us and build a new store in our new neighborhood. Oh yes, and maybe we are also going to win the million-dollar lotto next week. Why not? Sounds right to me.
Image source: Pixabay.com
5 people like this
5 responses
@Ceerios (4698)
• Goodfellow, Texas
21 Jan 17
@pgntwo - Friend PGN - Your comment reminded me of the time I visited the main post office in Houston, Texas of a Saturday morning some years ago. there were separate lines before each of the many service windows, all of the lines moving slowly. One line became shorter (momenatrily anyway), and a little man switched from his original line to the shortening line. When he arrived at the service window, the clerk shut the window, so the guy had to go to another line. For some reason, he kept jumping lines - and the clerks kept on closing their windows in his face as soon as he got to the front. He appeared to be about to have a bout of apoplexy - finally jumping up and down, red in the face, hands waving, etc. He ran off and came back again, dragging some manager type with him. Surely that was a funny deal, not to be forgotten from 1980 or thereabouts. -Gus-
2 people like this
@MarshaMusselman (38865)
• Midland, Michigan
24 Jan 17
@Ceerios Our post offices have everyone stay in one line and then if a window does shut down no one loses their place.
2 people like this
@Ceerios (4698)
• Goodfellow, Texas
21 Jan 17
@jstory07 - Ms Judy - Although grocery carts cost "only" around $150 each back in the 1950s, the store I referred to in my comment was losing, one way or another, more than $50 thousand in carts each year, most of them by folks pushing them to their homes full of groceries. -Gus-
@MarshaMusselman (38865)
• Midland, Michigan
24 Jan 17
If the prices are that good, driving fifteen miles may not be that bad of an idea or simply do a bigger once a month shop there and smaller needs closer to home. If your milk prices have been that high, it makes me wonder where you live.
We were paying about 2.49 per gallon for the past few years but six months ago ours went down to 1.49 per gallon. The half gallon sizes are more than that, though. I thought the decrease was related to our store now owning a dairy farm or something like that, but I found out recently that we're in a price war with walmart. Our milk is now down to 1.09 per gallon and eggs have come down in price quite a bit too.
@Ceerios (4698)
• Goodfellow, Texas
21 Jan 17
@JudyEv - Ms Judy - Yes. Stocking up on low-cost items would make a longer run to the store worth the effort. Where we plan to be after moving boasts another of those worthy stores reasonably close by, so we should be OK. My small distress about the recent arrival of this particular store was due to the fact that it did not arrive where we resided for years and years until we were in the process of moving from there. Such is life, right? -Gus-
1 person likes this
@Ceerios (4698)
• Goodfellow, Texas
22 Jan 17
@JudyEv - Ms Judy - As I once observed, some like bottled stuff and some like it from cups - and those are the breaks, so to speak. In the meantime (and times can get mean now and again...) we are taking advantage of this new store and its low-cost habits. Got a great huge pizza from them yesterday (it may fit in the oven...) for a pittance. That will probably bring some smiles 'twixt the tears.
Just for fun, here's "The Breaks"
The Chief of Police always drinks from a cup.
When he is all done, his coffeebreak's up.
The Fire Chief sips all his drinks from a bottle.
Thus he can keep breaking while racing full throttle.
The reasons are dim why these things are so,
but take it from me,
that's the way the breaks go.
............... -Gus-
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