It comes in pints?

Yesterday evening, feeling a bit too much like Old Mother Hubbard as I scrounged around for something for supper, I phoned my sister to see if she, too, might need a quick jaunt that evening to the local Safeway. It turned out that she did, so shortly after supper we ventured forth in the misty evening to gather groceries.

I had two missions: 1) Get regular groceries so that we weren't relegated to experiments in ketchup soup and 2) Gather the ingredients for baked blueberry pecan french toast to be made for our Sunday school brunch on Saturday morning.

Shopping with my sister is always pleasant. We're both commando shoppers and, even on days when there isn't a list, per se, we tend to need the same aisles and know where they are and where within that aisle the particular item in question is located. There is very little ambling up and down scouring shelves for a specific thing. (I did have one lapse, totally forgetting the baguettes for the french toast since I generally skip the bread aisle all together. So I had to run back for that, but such is life at the grocery store.)

The produce aisle is our last stop before checkout. I surveyed the contents of my cart: Baguettes? Check. Pecans? Check. Eggs? Check. Milk? Check. The last thing I needed was blueberries.

(Now let me preface the following with this: I do know it's a bit late in the year to be hoping for fresh blueberries. But, having seen them all over the Giant that's near my office just yesterday, I figured Chile was probably bursting with berries right now and we would reap the rewards of having imports from South America for the french toast and then I would file the recipe away for next season.)

Glancing over the options was a bit disheartening. I needed 24 ounces of blueberries, ideally this would come in the form of 3 half pints or 1 pint and 1 half pint. In the three cases of assorted berries there were pints of strawberries. There were pints of blackberries. There were no pints of blueberries. There were, however, pricetags for pints of blueberries - $3.99 a pint. What blueberries did exist were in packages about 3 inches long, 2 inches wide and 1/2 inch deep. These were marked 4.4 oz.

Frowning, I considered. There are 2 cups to a pint. There are 8 oz to a cup. So that means 16 oz to a pint or, roughly, three 4.4 oz packages (give or take - certainly close enough for government work). So, I reasoned that needing 24 oz of blueberries would necessitate 6 packages in their piddly 4.4oz size, it would be over, but better too many than too few.

Try thought I might I could not find out the cost of a 4.4 oz package of blueberries.

With a vague sense of foreboding, I loaded six packages into the cart and headed off to the checkout where my sister was already waiting. She let me scoot in first and I unloaded the goods onto the conveyer. As the blueberries rang up, I glanced at the monitor. $3.99?

"Um. The blueberries? The tag said $3.99 for a pint, but that," I pointed to the package, "is not a pint. It's only 4.4 oz, there are 16 oz in a pint."

The cashier was flummoxed. She tried the reasoning of, "That's how it rang up so it must be what it costs."

I countered, "If your tag says $3.99 a pint, why would I pay $3.99 for just over a quarter of a pint? That's nearly 4 times what your listed price says by the time I get to a pint."

I very well may have been speaking elvish at this point because the dear girl looked as though I had just recited a formula for calculating the area under a curve. She took a package and wandered off to talk to the "PIC" - or "Person in Charge" over by the cigarette case. What transpired, I don't know, there were quiet whispers, points and head shakes. I'm guessing they were trying to figure out how I knew there were 16 oz in a pint.

Raising my voice slightly so it would carry over to them, I offered to the PIC, "That package is only 4.4 oz. Your sign says that it's $3.99 for a pint - which would be 16 oz, not 4.4."

More whispering and head shaking and the cashier toddled off in the direction of produce. It was at this moment that I had an out of body experience. I realized that right then, in that very instance, I had become that woman. The one with a coupon that expired yesterday who just wonders if it mightn't still be good today. The one who is complaining because the sale item was supposed to cost $3.99 and it rang up as $4.01. As I reflected on this, the cashier came back and told me that there were no pricetags at all for blueberries.

"Can I show you?" So off we both toddled to the produce aisle where I pointed out the sign that very clearly says, "Blueberries. $3.99 per pint."

All during this, it should be noted, there are only two lanes open. Mine and the express lane. And the traffic is piling up behind me as I dicker over the price of some fruit. I'd've been happy for a hole to open up and swallow me, if it would just let me take the berries with me.

Clutching the sign, the cashier took it and the berries back to the PIC, then they came back over to me where the PIC said, "Well, the sign says $3.99 per pint, true, but we don't have any pints."

"I realize that," I said, "However you also don't have a price for the 4.4 oz container, so to expect me to pay the pint price for a quarter pint is a bit unreasonable. These," and I stacked three containers on top of one another, "are slightly less than but close enough to a pint. As are these," I did the same stacking mechanism with the other 3 containers, "So why not charge me $3.99 twice, for the two pints of berries, and we can all be on our way."

"Well I couldn't authorize a loss like that. Besides, we don't have pints."

"But there's no loss! If anything, I'm the one getting less than I should. 16 oz in a pint, 3 containers of 4 oz for the same price. This isn't hard. It's two pints."

"Well, I could let you have two containers for the pint price, but I couldn't let you buy more than two containers."

"But I need two pints of berries."

"But, we don't have pints."

We went round and round a few more times before I gave up, admitted defeat and had the berries removed from my bill. Apparently the equivalent of two pints of berries is not the same thing as two pints of berries.

As I loaded my groceries into the car I sighed and thought to myself, "Gosh, I'd really love a pint."