The Case of the Shrinking Yogurt
August 6, 2008 | 4 Comments
This might make me sound really old, but whatever. Just about every night before I go to bed I eat a thing of yogurt. I read something somewhere that said one thing to help give you a good night sleep is to eat around 200 to 250 calories right before bed. The idea being that this gives your body something to burn while you’re sleeping rather then burning nothing and making you really hungry when you wake up. Who knows if it’s true or not. Anyway, I eat a thing of delicious Publix Fruit on the Bottom yogurt every night. I’m partial to mixed berries, tropical blend, the occasional banana, and the classic strawberry and banana.
Not to long ago Publix decided to make a packaging change on their yogurt containers. They got rid of the useless plastic lid, opting for the single foil cover. This is good, more environmentally friendly. Though they decided to also shrink the size from 8oz down to 6oz. This is crap. Granted, all the other yogurt manufacturers on the planet do so in 6oz packages but I liked my 8oz size. It offered more deliciousness. Ok, that sounds dumb. In fact what’s crap about the size change is not the size change at all.
Pre- and post- yogurt shrinkage. Photo taken by Listener42
You see Publix changed the size but they kept the same price. Oh yes, they didn’t change the price. Way to pull a fast one there Publix. One day I’m paying $5.50 for 80 oz of delicious fruit on the bottom yogurt and the next day I’m paying $5.50 for only 60 oz. That’s a 25% decrease in product for the same price. Foul! Foul! I’m crying foul! Of course it’s not like I’m going to boycott or anything, I like the yogurt too much.
Amy I overreacting or right on? Let me know in the comments.
Publix Fun
October 6, 2003 | 10 Comments
There once was a time when I worked a less, how shall I saw, rewarding job. I worked at Publix (for those not in the southeast USA, Publix is a grocery chain) for a good three years of my early life. I was sixteen, a sophomore in high school, and looking for money. So, I turned to the “we hire everyone” people of Publix. They signed me on as a bag boy, oh wait, I’m sorry, front service personnel (glorify it all you want I guess), and thus, I was thrown into the working world.
But, I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say I worked. Well, I did work at not working and I must say I was pretty good at that. Ok, let me lay it down for you. For a good majority of the time I worked, er, spent at Publix a good five or so of my friends from school were also on the payroll. We had that store wired. I could walk in there right now and tell you which isle’s have “dummy” surveillance cameras and which have actual ones. I know the managers routines, how much money the store takes in a day, I know… well, now that I think about it, I know some pretty valuable information for my friends in the crime business. But anyway, we used our knowledge for good, not ill.
I would start the day by clocking in exactly seven minutes late because the system worked so that it rounded to the closest seven minutes. Seven minutes late was rounded down to being on time. In turn, I would also clock out exactly seven minutes early; thus maximizing my pay per time spent.
A good majority of my on-the-clock time was spent in the parking lot, “getting carts.” This is where the magic happened; and by magic I mean trouble. We, my friends and I, often played a game in which we would dare each other to do things; we called it “I Dare You.” It started simple like set off our car alarms for a period of time or lie down in the road but then quickly evolved. I don’t want to say that I once got a guy (our valedictorian no doubt) to urinate in the parking lot bushes or that we collectively hung a cart vertically from the tree, but we did.
Though, sometimes we did actually do what we were in the parking lot to do, and that was get carts. One night, around Christmas time, two other guys and myself brought in 148 carts at one time. It was a train of carts about 20 parking spaces long and was a mother to push, but we did it’the managers didn’t like the fact that we had to stop traffic in front of the store to bring them in, but what did we care. Getting carts also meant walking around the block to make sure our carts didn’t wonder off to various bus stops, this was usually about a forty five minute venture.
After it got too hot to be outside, or if it was raining, or the managers were, I would return to the store and well, again do nothing. If I had been told to clean something, I would go back to the mop room. Now this place had this really cool chemical dispensing system for all the various cleaning supplies. No matter what I had been told to clean, I would mix up the same chemical solution which was taught to me by my friend the valedictorian. It consisted of glass cleaner, surface disinfectant, water, and floor stripper. Now the floor stripper chemical was solely to be used in these giant waxing machines because of it’s extremely hazardous to ones skin properties, but that was the secret ingredient, its what did all the dirty work. After about ten minutes of playing in the back, I would “clean” whatever I had been sent out the clean. No matter how small the task, I made sure the job took a good twenty minutes, even if it was just a window or something. A bathroom cleaning took a good hour and a half, a checkout lane, thirty minutes a piece. Though, the managers (who undoubtedly hated all of us) were notorious for giving us ridiculous cleaning tasks just to stay busy. These included cleaning the break room, cleaning the tile on the side of the building in front of the store, and yes, mopping the handicap parking spaces.
Another fun, and time consuming task, was a little thing called blocking. This was basically pulling all items on a particular shelf to the front so that it was a smooth block. I guess the wonderful managers thought that a more visually appealing isle would cause people to buy more food, who knows. Anyway, blocking took up a lot of time. Especially when you were blocking the paper towels so that your friend could lie down behind the stacked paper towels on the shelf and hit them out at people passing by. That was fun.
As you can rightly see, I did a lot of stuff other than actually servicing the front. Though, I did a lot of public service while on the clock at Publix. This included changing a tire for some old woman who didn’t know how, chasing a bank robber, and investigating a hit and run for a manager–even though he insisted that I didn’t and spend my time bagging instead. It’s a wonder I was never fired.
But alas, my time at Publix ended senior year when I moved on to bigger and better things–though, come to think I never actually quit, I just told the manager that hated me I got a new job. Now, I don’t encourage current employees of the “Where Shopping is a Pleasure” supermarket to take my former practices to action, I can’t be held responsible for that. But, do go and have fun. Create your own ways to spend your time and, above all, keep the managers under the impression that you are not only doing what you are supposed to but you are enjoying it.