Is it just me or has anyone else left a supermarket lately feeling like they should call Crimestoppers?
I don’t get it.
I’m only carrying one bag out the door but my purchase totals $300. No matter how often it happens, I stand there, staring at the cashier, puzzled, and thinking: Shouldn’t I have 10 more bags? Have I paid for the 25 people behind me too?
Much to my utter gosh and gulp dismay, the numbers always check out. Rats.
I wobble out the door, feeling like I’m supposed to yell or whine about something but what’s the use? Okay, yes: even the biggest of windbags among us sometimes deflate under the most puzzling and trying of circumstances.
Should I dial 9-1-1?
I know – you think I’m being a drama queen here but, hey, you weren’t there when my doctor had me tested for cancer. He was concerned about my sudden and severe weight loss. Lucky for me, it was only late-stage rickets and borderline malnutrition, a condition more common than you might have thought in non-Third World countries like Canada and the United States: https://globalnutritionreport.org/resources/nutrition-profiles/north-america/
In fact, a recent Nanos research poll showed that 61 percent of Canadians are now not only buying cheaper food, but 25 percent of us are stockpiling when we find deals and a whopping 17 percent – just like me – are simply eating less. It used to be called a diet at the turn of the 20th century, like a healthy lifestyle change; in more recent times it has become known as starvation.
Ironically, I learned about things like scurvy and rickets in high school biology class and always had a bit of morbid fascination with these once-common ailments from ancient times.
So, if nothing else, I suppose this could be considered a learning experience; not just for me, mind you: for all of us.
No doubt, things like childhood hunger and malnutrition – like poverty – will also be a thing of the past, despite the hype from such recent measures as the Federal government’s grocery rebate. The rebate is positioned to, theoretically, benefit 11 million lower-income Canadian households and will be facilitated through the GST credit.
Unfortunately, for some of us lower-income Canadians, there is a thing called ‘eligibility,’ which basically means, you may only be ‘eligible’ to eventually experience the learning curves associated with rickets and scurvy, just as your great-great-great grandparents did in Medieval times. Gulp.
The word ‘eligibility,’ I must say, also brings to mind that $25 gift card one mollified grocery chain offered not long ago, following that bread price thingy.
Personally, I can’t help but empathize with that poor CEO, Mr. Galen Weston, when people unfairly whine and bicker about his grocery store profits these days. Weston is, in fact, a Canadian icon, thanks to his brilliant TV commercials, and I seem to recall he was also the one who discovered the moral fibre within himself – after years of suffering the silent effects of ethical constipation – to rat out all his former four-flushing fellows.
Weston, too, unless I’m mistaken, was the first among them to say, “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” by offering that legendary, one-time $25 gift card online.
All you had to do to be ‘eligible’ was to give up your entire life’s story, along with all your personal information, the colour of your underwear on Tuesdays and maybe click on a box to agree if you cared to donate a kidney or two. Okay, sorry, sorry; that’s a lie. Who would want a kidney from someone who doesn’t eat properly? Seriously.
It must have worked though. Unless I missed it, no one ever did go to jail for (allegedly!) fixing bread prices. Besides, it’s not like shoplifting or something, and just in case you wondered, as I once did, it is also against the law for the Federal government to pass a law to bring down the price of food, so don’t even go there.
Please keep that in mind the next time you are tempted to shoplift.
Shoplifting, in case you haven’t wondered, hurts us all and telling the judge you never saw any signage prominently posted about such a thing anywhere is not considered a viable defense in any court of law in Ontario. Just sayin’.
And before you even ask, the answer is “NO.” The judge will not allow you to pay the fine with $25 gift cards.
Sigh.
