Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Misunderstanding at the grocery store

This story is kind of funny but sad too. Yesterday, after saying a sad goodbye to L at the ferry, B and I headed over to the local supermarket to get a few items. While there, I ran into a friend of ours. She is usually quite frugal so I was surprised to see that she had a shopping cart and it was loaded! She was ecstatic about the big sale going on in the store. True, the store was literally papered with signs advertising the special prices on everything, but hardly enough of a savings to make for a full shopping cart. Then she pointed out the signs and I took a closer look.

They were typical, advertising the now low price per kilo of meat and such. Like "Whole Chickens! Only $19.75 per kilo!" But under that, and on every sign, it also said "Ahorra $i!" Only the I looked like a 1. Why they used the $ instead of an S, I don't know. At any rate, she had interpreted it as reading "Now 1 peso!" Actually it said "Now Yes!" So she thought everything being advertised was the special price of one peso, or about 10 US cents! So she had loaded up her cart with all of these 1 peso items. Thankfully, I was able to explain it to her. That it was just a play with fonts and not actually one peso. She was very disappointed and had to put almost everything she had back on the shelves. Funny, but sad.

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