Sunday, May 11, 2008

Squeeze Play

I was in a local juiceteria over the weekend - why mince words, it was Jamba Juice - and my son asked me if he could have a bag of kettle corn. I looked at the bags on the rack, and each of them had a sticker reading "1.00" on it, which seemed a reasonable price, so we took it up to the counter. The clerkette rang it up on the scanner, then asked me for a dollar and thirty-four cents.

"But they're just a dollar," I said.

"Oh, there's tax," she said.

Now, if you're a newcomer to this blog, I don't live in East Germany, or any other place where they would have a confiscatory sales tax approximating one third of the selling price. I pointed this out, in a helpful way, to the clerkette, who then went to check with her superior, who informed her (but not me) that every single bag of kettle corn on the rack had been mislabeled, and they did indeed cost a dollar and twenty-five cents apiece.

If the kettle corn had been for me, I would have put it back on the rack and walked out hungry. My son didn't understand why I would be outraged over twenty cents, but he probably has more to amuse himself in his life than I do. But that's just not right.

3 comments:

Joe Levy said...

You don't live in East Germany?

If they leave them on the rack mislabeled, isn't that their problem, and not yours? They owe you ¢25.

Tom Nawrocki said...

I agree. But Jack just wanted to eat that kettle corn. His hunger trumped my principles.

Joe Levy said...

First they came for the kettle corn. And I said nothing.

My point isn't that you shouldn't have bought it. Only that they still owe you a quarter. This is the sort of thing that would be worth writing a letter over. If the stamp didn't cost more than a quarter.