Lightbulb police? (was RE: Anyone off to VCF-UK)

On 06/04/2010 05:33 PM, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: The only place like that we frequent is Costco. The monkey at the exit just makes his mark on the receipt with a marker after pretending to look at the shopping cart, and out the door we go. The nicer ones actually put a happy face on the receipt when we have our kids with us, so those days we give the receipt to the kids to present and they get a kick out of it. The more annoying part is the entrance where they ask to show a membership card. 99.9% of the time, I can just nod at the guy and walk past him without showing him anything. It's only when they hire a new guy that actually takes his "job" seriously that I get stopped, at which point point I show him the card and ask him why he needs to waste my time? After a few times, they learn. The only real annoyance I've had with them is when I try to recycle the bottles. As with most states in the US, the charge $0.05 per bottle of whatever. Sometimes they have special seasonal beers. As you might imagine, I can't finish that entire case of pumpkin ale by the 2nd week of november, so their recycle machine no longer recognizes the barcode, so I have to lug the bottles to the customer service desk and tell'em to give me back my nickels. Hey, if they're gonna charge me for them to make sure I recycle them, I'm most certainly going to make sure I do. If that makes me a cheap bastard, let them consider what it costs them to pay someone to sit there behind the counter to deal with that. Not my problem, they should have programmed their damned machines to accept the barcodes on those bottles, even if they were from a month ago. What I find interesting is that it seems those machines don't actually reuse the bottles, rather they smash them. Does it cost them less money to melt down the glass shards and make new bottles from them than to return the bottles to the vendor? I presume it would cost about the same to transport them (by weight, not volume) Or is the whole thing a scam anyway? Yes, the savings on groceries are worth that tiny little bit of hassle, otherwise I'd have to go to the supermarket and pay 2x for a blister pack of spinach, which would be far more annoying. Between the "Executive" membership kickbacks and the sponsored Amex card kickbacks, we more than get back the membership fees. Maybe that's because we use Costco to buy actual veggies, dairy, and meats, instead of prepackaged boxed microwaveable crap, so it's more expensive... but we're healthier that way, so it's worth it. If I can make it myself, I do. Example: it's ridiculously easy to make apple sauce, just buy a big 10lbs bag of apples, cut them rectangularly downwards from the top so as to remove the core without having to use a coring tool. Boil them until they're soft enough to squeeze, but not so much that they're mush. Let them cool and squeeze them out of their skins into a bowl using clean hands. Then add some cinamon, a bit of lime juice and some sugar and blend them with an immersion blender. Put in sterilized jars, and put'em in the fridge overnight before eating. Total actual work not counting waiting is about 20 minutes. The pre-made apple sauce from Costco is full of HFCS, though it's cheaper and far less work than making it yourself, I'm not about to feed the kids HFCS, which is known to cause liver scarring and obesity. Like fixing old computers, making your own food is an enjoyable hobby. Breads are ridiculously easy to make and only need about 4 ingredients plus time. Yogurt is also very easy to make, though I don't bother as much since I can get it cheaper at costco than I can at the supermarket. On occasion, the local supermarket does have "organic apple sauce" which is made with nothing but apples, not even sugar, so I did purchase it. Kids did like it, though they wanted cinnamon with it. It's more expensive than making it myself, but I don't always feel like making it, especially in the summer when it's hot. :) But overall, for stuff like meats, veggies, fruit, juice, and dairy, the Costco wins, and for other things, we'll make'em ourselves. We do visit the local supermarkets occasionally for what Costco doesn't have, and those times we make sure we don't use the self-check out lines. Hey, jobs are scarce, plus, there's no reason I should do extra work to check out my own groceries at a nasty annoying machine that talks down at me about unexpected items in the checkout area, while some poor high school or college kid languishes without a job for the summer. Though recently the only checkout clerks I see are middle aged moms, which makes it even worse if they lose their jobs. :( When those things first started and the lines were long, a manager offered to show us how they work, so I told her "Why? So more clerks can lose their jobs? No thanks, I'll wait in line. Meanwhile, you go and hire more clerks." She wasn't too happy with that. :-D