Monday, February 2, 2009

Either they're brilliant or they're idiots.

While digging through the humble-jumble piles of stuff on the Manager's Special table the other day at Kroger, I stumbled across something that was worth a giggle.

Naturally, it had to happen when I didn't have my camera or cell phone with me.

I was eyeing a bottle of cooking sherry and wishing I had the facilities to cook a chicken with the sherry - what I'd give to have a meal I cooked myself - when something decidedly odd about a box of bagged candy caught my eye. I'd glanced at it earlier, but since I'm trying to bring my weight back down to a healthier range I'd ignored it after that.

Now, though, I took a closer look at the price tag someone had stuck on the nearest bag. These tags are impossible to miss, at least at the local center for comestibles. They're bright yellow with an eye-stabbing orange stripe across the new low price, and just under the barcode on the yellow patch is the original price. I guess the idea is to make sure the cashier doesn't miss the fact that it's discounted, and to show the shopper how much they're saving.

Manager's Special price: eighty-nine cents per bag.

Original price: thirty cents per bag.

I checked most of the bags on top, and all of them had the same price tag. Oy. So a fifty-nine cent jump in price is the new version of saving money?

I couldn't help it. I just started giggling. When a stock girl wandered over to see what I was laughing about, I just pointed to the price tag. She started laughing too, and took the bag to the service desk to show a friend of hers while I decided I'd stayed long enough and headed for the checkout line, laughing all the way through and all the way home after that.

But...really, if that helped get people to buy it, wow. I'd better take a closer look at the price tags next time.

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