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I have a few recent small observations to share. None of them seem big-deal enough for their own thread, so I'm just going to heap them here. Maybe you have some small observations of your own to add to the pile.
--Free range chickens. In supermarkets they are in the butcher refrigerators and their eggs are over in the dairy fridge. I've been sceptical that really there are so many free range chickens and eggs. I suspected chicken fraud. However I do now see chickens enjoying the great outdoors in out of the way rural places. I used to never see that. (Well not since I was 15; I'm 50 now.) I guess there really are free range chickens and their eggs in the supermarkets.
--This-is-a-want-not-a-need-store, Garden Ridge. Yesterday I went into this Garden Ridge store which sells very little that anyone could say they actually need. Their merchandise looked considerably more scant than the other half dozen times I've been there. I think they reduced the height of some shelves, removed some shelves and made the aisles wider, and have left other shelves & tables empty. There still seemed to be about 200 different types of artificial Christmas trees on display, and maybe 1000 different decorative pillows. But really, I bet this store has been hit hard by people reeling in their credit-fueled spending and reducing their spending due to lack of employment or the fear thereof.
--Bad website info lead me to fresh apples at 62% less than I was prepared to pay. There is a well known pick-your-own apple orchard in the area. Every year we wait for their crops to be announced. This year they began advertising on TV and in newspapers. For more specific info, we logged onto their website to see which apples were ready at which orchard. We double checked in mid-morning the day we intended to go, just in case the type apple we want would already have been all picked. But when we got to the orchard after a 35 minute drive, we were told the apples we wanted were not yet ready---despite the website specifically naming them as ready. Frustrated about the inaccurate info on the website, we decided not to settle for the another kind of apple that really was ripe and ready for picking....We hopped in the car and drove down the road to a smaller competitor. At the small competitor we picked the kind of apples we had declined to pick at the bad website info orchard. At the small competitor we paid $0.60 per pound instead of $1.59 per pound. How do ya like dem apples? I looked across the orchard to spot the still ripening type we had originally wanted to pick. They are huge this year. We will return to this smaller orchard for those apples at 62% less that we were prepared to pay. Bye-bye "big guys" orchard. Fix your website, "big guys."
--A frustration can also be a comfort. Don't you hate it that mattress manufacturers change something insignificant on a mattresses (like the color of the thread used to quilt the bottom of the mattress?!) and then change the name and the list price on the mattress to sell it out of a different store---and really, to make it impossible for us to make comparisons between mattresses at the different stores? Very frustrating. The comfort is that, later, I will have no idea when the same mattress comes up for sale at a better price somewhere else. I wouldn't recognize the same mattress from another dealer, because they try to hide from us whether they are selling essentially the same mattress as their competitor or not. So I can still feel okay that I negotiated the best price possible. Ignorance is bliss if the money has already been forked over.
--Furniture sales are up. Ha-ha, so the day I turned over my money for the above implied mattress, I go home and hear on the Weekly Business Journal that furniture sales are up. Thank you. I did that. I'm responsible. It is a little ego-deflating for me to recognize how often I do seem to be a mere part of trends, when I would like to think I am this independent actor making all my own decisions and not much influenced by outside forces.
So, do you have any oddball small observations about the economy as you experience it?
--Free range chickens. In supermarkets they are in the butcher refrigerators and their eggs are over in the dairy fridge. I've been sceptical that really there are so many free range chickens and eggs. I suspected chicken fraud. However I do now see chickens enjoying the great outdoors in out of the way rural places. I used to never see that. (Well not since I was 15; I'm 50 now.) I guess there really are free range chickens and their eggs in the supermarkets.
--This-is-a-want-not-a-need-store, Garden Ridge. Yesterday I went into this Garden Ridge store which sells very little that anyone could say they actually need. Their merchandise looked considerably more scant than the other half dozen times I've been there. I think they reduced the height of some shelves, removed some shelves and made the aisles wider, and have left other shelves & tables empty. There still seemed to be about 200 different types of artificial Christmas trees on display, and maybe 1000 different decorative pillows. But really, I bet this store has been hit hard by people reeling in their credit-fueled spending and reducing their spending due to lack of employment or the fear thereof.
--Bad website info lead me to fresh apples at 62% less than I was prepared to pay. There is a well known pick-your-own apple orchard in the area. Every year we wait for their crops to be announced. This year they began advertising on TV and in newspapers. For more specific info, we logged onto their website to see which apples were ready at which orchard. We double checked in mid-morning the day we intended to go, just in case the type apple we want would already have been all picked. But when we got to the orchard after a 35 minute drive, we were told the apples we wanted were not yet ready---despite the website specifically naming them as ready. Frustrated about the inaccurate info on the website, we decided not to settle for the another kind of apple that really was ripe and ready for picking....We hopped in the car and drove down the road to a smaller competitor. At the small competitor we picked the kind of apples we had declined to pick at the bad website info orchard. At the small competitor we paid $0.60 per pound instead of $1.59 per pound. How do ya like dem apples? I looked across the orchard to spot the still ripening type we had originally wanted to pick. They are huge this year. We will return to this smaller orchard for those apples at 62% less that we were prepared to pay. Bye-bye "big guys" orchard. Fix your website, "big guys."
--A frustration can also be a comfort. Don't you hate it that mattress manufacturers change something insignificant on a mattresses (like the color of the thread used to quilt the bottom of the mattress?!) and then change the name and the list price on the mattress to sell it out of a different store---and really, to make it impossible for us to make comparisons between mattresses at the different stores? Very frustrating. The comfort is that, later, I will have no idea when the same mattress comes up for sale at a better price somewhere else. I wouldn't recognize the same mattress from another dealer, because they try to hide from us whether they are selling essentially the same mattress as their competitor or not. So I can still feel okay that I negotiated the best price possible. Ignorance is bliss if the money has already been forked over.
--Furniture sales are up. Ha-ha, so the day I turned over my money for the above implied mattress, I go home and hear on the Weekly Business Journal that furniture sales are up. Thank you. I did that. I'm responsible. It is a little ego-deflating for me to recognize how often I do seem to be a mere part of trends, when I would like to think I am this independent actor making all my own decisions and not much influenced by outside forces.
So, do you have any oddball small observations about the economy as you experience it?
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