If it's not on my list, it is not in my mind. Aggravating.
Saturdays at the Dollar Store aren't a great idea anyway. The lines are long, the people are loud, the kids are whining, and the day is hot. I put two cartons of corn muffin mix in my basket, because they were two for a dollar. I'd decided to go Mexican, and I bought black beans, canned spicy tomatoes, Spanish rice, and will grill the Hatch chiles I got last week at the co-op, and make a huge black bean salad and corn muffin on the side. The corn muffins rang up at 60 cents each instead of 50 cents per. Twenty cents may sound like a lot, but increasingly, the Dollar Store's prices at the register and price on the shelf don't match. Guess which is always higher. You guessed right, the register.
So this happens every time now, at least a couple of times. I go to that store 4X month, so if I'm gypped out of an average of 35 cents each time, and that is a low conservative estimate, then at the end of the year I'm gypped out of $17.50, or two months worth of Netflix bills. If I'm gypped an average of 50 cents each time, that's $24 and one and a half Bountiful Baskets price. You see my thinking.
So I keep an eagle eye on the prices, and when the corn muffin mix rang up overpriced I mentioned it. The cashier said that sometimes it takes the sale price off at the end. "It might do that this time." I said "Might??" arching my eyebrow the best I could without looking Halloweeny and thinking but not saying, "What is this, a casino?"
The people behind me started shifting foot to foot, the universally understood gesture of "I knew I'd get in the slow line today" which is their way of telling me I'm the equivalent of hair gunk slowing the flow of the drain.
Neither the cashier guy nor I saw a 'take it off at the end' price so he called on the microphone for a "Void and an override, please!" More shifting of feet, accompanied by grumbles. Audible growls, actually. I might as well be 15 years old and the cashier shouting on the microphone, "Price check on Kotex, please!"
The void lady arrived in due time, unhurried and unperturbed and unfazed by any antiquated concept of 'customer service.' She listened to the cashier and looked at the register monitor, and said "Look, the price is taken off right there!" The line almost had a mutiny because "It's all for nothing!" A second cash register opened up and no one was trampled in the rush to get over there, thank goodness. No medics were called.
The cashier and void lady mumbled something together and then a great bustle erupted. Keys went in the register, and clangs and cheeps of bells and whistled and she hustled to my cart (she's really moving fast now, a-HA!) and she rooted around in my bags in the cart and then scurried back to the register and then said officiously, "Press yes on the debit please!" which I did, and she handed me the tape and I felt good that at least I had made a stand for whatever it is I am making a stand for.
I got home and the muffin mixes had been taken out of my bag. No mix.
Defeated by the Dollar Store. Again. I am now busy looking up recipe for corn bread from scratch.
I Fight Authority, Authority Always Wins
2 comments:
Loved this...the way you added up what those small over-rings will add up to at the end of the year was an eye-opener. I need to be more diligent on insisting the prices are right at the register. I've done the same thing in the store...went in for one thing and forgot it, leaving instead with a big bag of what I didn't really need.
Hi inchwormart,
Thanks! Isn't the over-ringing an eye-opener when you see how it accumulates?! I shop at two stores, the grocery store (a mom & pop) and the dollar store. The grocery store has had the same employees forever and they train the help very well. There is rarely an over-ring, or if there is, they catch it first. So I don't say anything.
But at the Dollar Store, it has reached a critical mass because it happens at least once, usually twice, every time now. Plus, never mind the sale price, the regular shelf prices rarely match the ring-up price. So I decided to speak up.
Right now I'm using the Dollar Store bags for garbage bags. It is my own little SO THERE, lol.
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