Recession Crazy

The recession seriously has some folks becoming unhinged.

Okay so, I went to my favorite local “deli” and ordered my typical lunch. I always get ½ pound of chicken salad a piece of lettuce to wrap it in and two tomato slices. Well suffice it to say that the price was different again. Last week it was $3.33 this week it’s $4.32 two weeks before that it was $3.98. Now they don’t weigh this mind you, it’s just depending on who is on the register how the ½ pound (which always seems to confuse them) rings up. Well we got the price straight finally and here comes the interesting part, there’s a new seriously hard-ass nit picky manager who chastises the cashier and is all “Lettuce and tomato doesn’t come with the a la carte chicken salad, it only comes with the sandwich.” She responds by quietly telling him that the owner always sells it to me just like that.

Now I’ve been to this place, easily 30 times this year and this has never been an issue. So when I pointed that out, the guy gets all up in my face and is like, “If your boss asked you to work an extra 30 minutes for free would you do it?”

Not knowing how to respond I just stood there shocked that he was making such a HUGE deal about this. Now mind you, they’ve always thrown in the lettuce and tomato, I’ve never asked them to like I needed some kind of produce “hook-up”. What would the extra charge be anyway, like a quarter? A whole head of lettuce is like .99 cents, so the piece they gave me would be maybe a nickel. The tomato slices maybe a dime. So that’s an extra .15 cents. Yeah it’s a hardship but I think I can swing it and still pay my rent.

While this guy continues his rant about me not doing things for free and how he really doesn’t want to go up on prices and I’m all dude, if my complementary tomato slice and piece of lettuce is going to prevent you from making payroll, then I really don’t know what to tell you. All the workers just look at me helplessly and apologetic of course, because no one wants to own up to never charging me for the tomato and lettuce, lettuce which almost always has a gnat on it by the way.

So I took my bag and informed the manager that I would probably not be back.