Went to the supermarket this morning, to pick up supplies for the coming week. I've learnt that, despite the flocks of people who do their shopping on Saturday mornings, I'm still better off going then than at, say, 9.30pm--my preferred shopping time--as this is usually when the fresh produce arrives. (I use the word "fresh" somewhat flexibly here; perhaps the more appropriate word would be "new". Some things, such as lettuce, very much do not appear to be fresh, even when they're newly carted out.) So I make my sojourn this morning, trying to allot for everything I'll need for the next week, as this coming weekend marks another trip to Bucureşti for a round of medical appointments.

I've been trying to employ frugality lately whilst shopping, both because of cost and because of the simple truth that, when I have food in the house, I eat it, whether I'm really hungry or not. So when I spied a jar of good-looking preserved peaches, I hesitated a bit, as they were neither necessary or fitting in with the spirit of frugality. But a little splurge never hurts now and then, and as they were a rare opportunity for a preserved fruit option that didn't employ sugar and syrup, I decided to spring for them. Only to regret my decision when I got to the checkout counter and found that, once again, the price listed on the shelf was wildly different from the actual item price, and I was paying twice what I'd expected to for them.

This is not the first time Artima has pulled this particular bait-and-switch; apparently if asked they claim that they "don't have time" to change all the price stickers all the time, and feel that this is a sufficient explanation for fleecing their customers on a regular basis. Again, I'm not a fan of many of the customer service practices in the States, but one of the themes I do appreciate is taking responsibility when an error is made, and to that end, honoring a listed price when there is a discrepancy between what is given and what is actually true seems fair. Not to mention that it keeps the establishment on its toes, and in so doing raises the quality of service.

I should have just refused them when I saw the price; informed the clerk that this was not the price that was given for the item and that it was more than I was willing to pay. But I've never been one to want to make scenes over this sort of thing, and I did still want the fruit, so I decided to let it go. It does serve as a good example of the kind of "service" one can expect here: it seems like a perfectly acceptable justification to lie to people about the price of an item, because it's just too much unnecessary trouble to give the correct information. That shifting of responsibility and blame off of oneself in whatever manner can be found is something that I've found to be depressingly common, and it shouldn't be a terrible surprise that it's made the jump from personal and governmental into a business strategy for large consumer retailers as well.