A Slow Boil and Grocery Prices

 Frogs and people.

We have much in common. Our lungs, for one. Remember dissecting them in high school? Every time I do, I cringe. Not because I'm afraid of blood or anatomy-in-the-raw. But because I just didn't want to taste any frog innards.

There we were sticking a small straw into the trachea. "Now gently blow air into the straw," the science teacher directed. So, I did. But when I stopped blowing, I neglected to take the air tube out of my pursed lips and a wreaking, formaldehyde-drenched puff of frog breath rushed back into my mouth. I couldn't not have been more grossed out and repulsed. "Ew, I breathed the same air from inside a frog's lung," my lab partners heard me scream.

Then there's the slow boil. I have never tried that experiment, but am told frogs don't jump out of hot water if it is heated in small degrees.

Much like we shoppers in the grocery store. Two years ago the price of a six-box raisin pack was 0.99. Then you notice it's 1.09. A few months go by and they're up to 1.29.  Until they are, as I just bought them up to 1.99. One hundred percent increase!

At first it was because merchants were catching up on lost profits during COVID. Then the rise was due to the price of gas. Now I don't see any rational, so I asked Aldi worker while I was waiting in line to check out in the one and only place to load your food on the belt, 

"Look I know it's not your fault, but why do groceries keep going up?  Gas is going down, COVID has long been over and all the checkers have disappeared to leave it to customers to self-scan, bag our own groceries and pay. The groceries should be going down because the stores no longer have to employ checkers! They should be paying us!" 

"I don't know," he blithely answered.

"Does any one else ask these questions?" 

"No." 

That's the other thing that's changed. Employees don't know anything about their own store.

"How long is the mulch sale on?" I asked the checker at Home Depot. "I don't know." I wanted to say. "Why don't you know what's going on in your place of employment?" But didn't. After all, now no one needs math or even the ability to read. Technology does it all. It even thinks for the employees.

I had a Walmart clerk cut some fabric for me. It was an easy 1/3 of a yard of a leather-like fabric to line the console of the car. It was 10.99 per yard. He said, 

"Wait, let me get my calculator." I said, "Well it's easy if you just get10% of $10 which is $1. then multiply by three to get 30%. Then do the same for the extra two .99's and add them together. $3.66."

"Ah," he said, "I was never good at math." 

"Neither was I, " I replied. "But a girl had to know her sales discounts. So I found shortcuts."

The help is in decline, but the prices are on the up as we become more amphibian-like. 

Come on in, the water's fine.

But the temperature's rising.