I quit shopping at Safeway a while ago, roughly because I resented having to swipe my purchases into a database of shopping knowledge in order to get a preferable price and roughly because I had moved to a location where two Fred Meyers were located closer to any Safeway.  For their part, Fred Meyers introduced their own piece of crock “Loyalty Card”, which “offers money back” for accumulated purchase, and I guess probably ends up just swallowing up money otherwise I would have “saved” if I had done what I generally do in clipping coupons.  It is, at the very least, less obnoxious than Safeway’s.  The terms of agreement of what the store demands for their “Loyalty Card”, and my desire not to have one, makes me loyal to Fred Meyers over Safeway.

But I had reason to shop at a Safeway this weekend.  I purchased some junk food item of ill health, quite frankly, which cost $1.39, $1.25 with the “Loyalty Card”.  I wait in line.  And the cashier cheerfully scans the object.

“Card?” she asks, as I lay out the buck and forty cents.
“No,” I said.
She looks at me confused.  “Do you… want to sign up for one?”
“No,” I said.
At which point she looks at me confused once again, and I smile weakly.  14 cents, into the ether.  I am confident that the cashier’s reaction can be extrapulated into some meaning for society in general, but I cannot quite articulate what that would be.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 10:21 am and is filed under On the Ground. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.