Boxcars @boxcars@qoto.org

Egg drama hatched at the #Costco cooler yesterday.

Pristine polypakked 21cent eggs had been flying towards the local full retail price of 0.27 and reached 0.25 after a few weeks.

And next to the pallets of two dozen paks were two pallets of six dozen homebrew packages of pressed cardboard and cling wrap.

Unfortunately the Che Guevara paks had no price posted but the people snapped up the hefty egg agglomerations anyway, whispering to themselves, 'Trust in Costco'.

Later I prostrated myself at the manager's altar, awaiting a sign of the price. As warehouse priests passed me in their vestiments and went on to their near retail duties I heard a voice... thirteen ninety nine. It was true. Trust in Costco.

Hi Tooters, I was out rolling the dice while food shopping again.

I'm back to cash because I rolled poorly.

Low price tier of a dozen Lucerne eggs had price mismatch. This high volume Safeway consistently overcharges at the checkout now. So using cash is just faster-easier to get my money back at the service desk.

A week ago in another part of the USA I was given the wrong box of repair parts--went back and it was so annoying to do the chargeback I decided to go back to cash. Also, chargebacks cost the biz money.

Few day ago, Small Food Retailer really messed up the sales again and I was having trouble with the card reader and was distracted. Had to go back next day to get my money.

They returned my misbegotten money as a glass milk bottle return, eliminating their potential chargeback, and thus screwing up their accounting and bottle inventory because they are unable to charge posted prices.

Tooters, now that we've prepped the Mastodon room, it's time to sidle up to our local reporters and suggest the outrage money machine is a waste of their professional time. Let's introduce ourselves and chat with them on we got started on the Fediverse. This is our superpower and now we smile and flex.

My #costco self-checkout burned itself out. They took it away after probably the upteenth manager meeting on self-checkout. First it was indeed self-checkout. Then there was a minder at each station. After that a checker checked you out, the notion of self removed from the task of checkout. Self never came back, and the checkers had to initial the receipt like it was a work of art. Then that stopped and higher ups checked badges while you stood in line, posing the question are you who you pretend to be? Self was now in complete doubt. Chaos crept in. One dark day I was accused of line cutting, and was about to put up my dukes while insisting to my accuser to just go ahead. And so he did, cursing all the way to the regular checkout off to the left. Another day I saw a manager wrangling with a person pushing tons of food towards the self-checkout. "sir, SIr! There is a line!" No it wasn't me again. Some days there were two lines. Other days there was just one line for the six stations. And now it's all gone. When I went before the judge to plead my case of self- and full-purchasing, I asked about the self-checkout, waiting for him to count my four items. "You know, it's not just us, they're shutting them down all over. Too many problems."

good evening tooters. I'm rolling down the east coast on #Amtrak 's night owl #northeastregional. co2 level in this quiet car is 1231ppm which is borderline acceptable indoors but casts aspersions on the breezy, white noise making vents that run the length of the coach. Wondering if the new trains to go into service in October will lower CO2 below 1000. This is the quiet car not even half full. We're mostly small, barely moving mouselike creatures. The co2 monitor blasted an ear shreiking alarm, so I jammed it between my legs trying to hold down the off button. Off buttons are now on buttons so sometimes one is not sure if one is getting off, or turning on. It wasn't a good look with my hands between my legs. I'm expecting to be escorted out of the quiet coach shortly.

Another local food retailer and I are trying to get a price posted for a bottle of juice. My second attempt the next week yielded some insight, at least with this grocer. Lack of staff, said the manager, as the checkout and I snagged him at the bustling, fully staffed checkout stations. Also, he replied they have not seen city inspectors checking that prices are posted and accurate, for years. If they can't post a price esp. after they raised the mystery price, after being flagged twice over two weeks, I'd have to say raising prices and not posting them is now a profitable business practice.

Heads up DC cyclists. Two days in a row I'm getting different youngsters telling me to hand over my ride in the middle of my trip. It's just a short conversation for now. Hoping this is not a trend going into summer.

Tooters, I spent some relaxing time on the Northeast Regional which is a train. During my stay, sniffling, coughing, hacking up phlegm ongoing all around me. Even the coach got in on it with excessive braking outside NYC causing a delightful wafting of burning oil in the coach air. Conductor and friend ran towards the whistle blowing engine. Me in my snuggly soft N95 chillin' as their two way radios exclaiming, 'well it's off the engine now'.

Saved this sprig from some on-sale kale. Put it in water with the rooting avocado pit. Newly constructed roots reach out. "Hungry", I hear the stalk whispering. I got you little friend.

I can't stop thinking about Epub.

Maybe if I just search Mastodon for Epub... [1 hour later]

Honey, I'm going out to Twitter to pick up some Epub. Be right back.

Let's say you're a fulltime park ranger and you're concerned about the herd drinking from a certain water hole, for whatever reason. You've counted 595 creatures, and about a third always go to that crummy watering hole, no matter the circumstances, so about 198 really thirsty head always drinking from the messed up water hole. And then one day there's a big storm, and the normally really stubborn, healthy, strong-willed 198 members of the herd don't show up to drink. It's only 55 at the crummy water spot. Then your boss says u musta counted wrong. And you, being agreeable, indicate it's possible. But you know even if the count was I little bit off, many members of the herd are losing interest in that crummy watering hole. It's a trend, and the boss is wrong to rely on percent and not face the actual numbers on the ground.

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2024/01/16/iowa-caucus-turnout-registered-republicans-15-percent-cold-weather-snow-donald-trump-expectations/72067396007/

Is this how it starts? I can't stop thinking about Mistress Bot's unceasing demands for the last four of my social. Privacy Act of '74 says the Gov can't deny service when I don't hand over my social, thus no more social on your driver's license. Police seem taken aback when I don't tell them social as an ID source, and then they pissed when I tell them a memorized Driver's license to read free and clear over the radio. What? DL# is not good enough?Now in order to get human help with banking I must hand over social? Yeah, no. Privacy rights, Babe. Gotta protect your privacy rights or everything is up for sale, your body, your work, your knowledge, freedom to travel, right to liberty--everything.

So a few weeks ago, a local mook missed his appointment with fate. A couple of dopes drove around the block, yanked out a tommy gun and made swiss cheese of his jalopy instead of his head. Maybe it was about a dame, or money, we'll never know. Shamus showed up, gumshoes too, and everyone gathered around and said it was nuts. And now it's a toot, a meme for your general pleasure. Well, at least it's something now.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/guns-auto-sears-automatic/2021/09/04/0be57914-0020-11ec-ba7e-2cf966e88e93_story.html

Trying to find analysis on independent voters in these primaries, or undeclared as they're called in NH, but can't find it in the discussion of SC. Registered voters are not turning out, and large numbers of independents are lurking, obscured by the reporting. I know we're lucky to see over 20% of all voters go to the polls but there's a big iceberg of independents floating out there in the dark. It was touched upon after the NH primary, because NH makes it easier to track. It's going to make a big hole in somebody's boat.

So there has been a breakthrough in my retail price adventure.
This windy winter morning, with small flakes of snow tumbling sideways, I went for more on-sale apples at the local grocer chain. Bagged, presented, and accompanied with several yes pleases, I gently offered on-sale apples to the checkout, positioned myself at the display, facing away from the human operator. Wrong price I said aloud, and knew I only had less than a minute. Off she stormed, to the produce area to check the displayed price. I ran to keep up, asking her how I could help her solve this problem. Anger had flooded her face, I only had a few more seconds, 'maybe I could talk to a manager and get this fixed for all of us?' Then she was gone. I was sure that I had failed.
I returned to the customer chute.

She returned, lips pursed, said a few words to her colleague in groceryspeak. Without looking anywhere her fingers slammed the sequence of commands to cancel and correct. Then it happened, the other checkout turned to me and said softly, the senior manager watches Yelp closely, if you post a poor review there then we have a chance. Ok, maybe she didnt say we. Hooboy, I couldn't believe it. Yes, yes, I had a Yelp account, passed down to me by my naive-webself from twenty years ago. This could work, we could have displayed prices that match register prices.

My checkout was now smiling at me. And the store manager was approaching, I did my best ten second elevator speech about proper charges using the glowing blank register screen as a prop, unfolded my arms to virtually embrace all the people around me harmed by this careless process of putting food on sale and charging full price. A customer was staring at me. The store manager had a sort of monotone response, mumbling yes, and, I see. And away he went, the store manager, disappearing around the aisle of
beers, each with colorful, pleasant missives upon them. Later I posted my message in a Yelp bottle and threw it into the Internet sea. This might work.

I'm still sparring store managers over published prices not matching the register price months later at two food retailers. One is a national chain, and the other is a local chain. I'm wondering what's going on. Answers are not forthcoming after the price correction, just some free shrugs.

At the big retailer, it could be a symptom of switching to online sales. My handheld soulmate whispers that 20% of all USA online sales is retail food, and is growing. Gargantuan retailers want to become behemoths in order to swallow the online market in one gulp. This is some new bad news for flavor, nutrition and quality, which are important to me for enjoying eating, moving and breathing.

Not sure what's up with the local chain, except maybe staff turnover messing with proper price updates. Cashier is already upset, angrily shouting in Spanish back at the fruit manager when I tell her the apples are actually a dollar less per pound, again. I just think the 'again' word.

Mind you, these are old price games from yesteryear that were squelched by government regulation prepandemic. But politcal times are tough. The mayor is tripping over criming, and a sport breakup, so I don't expect price gremlins to get attention.

So it's left to us. It's not too late to order a fruit tree and rustle up a massive container or two. Seriously, once you find a path to grow-ceries, you'll wonder why you bought retail food at these prices. This is my backstop, making small steps to food self-sufficiency in the concrete jungle.

I've already cut them out of fresh gingerroot and lemongrass. Indoor tomatoes are flowerng in now in January. All these plants got started with the food I bought from these retailers.

Plant the ginger root, the lemongrass, some seeds from the tomato. Try an avocado pit. You can root cabbage leaves. It's fantastic and wondrous. Try it.

Nice uppers on this Eddie Bauer made in China hiking shoe I got discounted at BJs. But once the sport shoe got wet the sole broke away and perhaps revealed the reason for the low price. Of many glues I've tried the E6000 glue is doing the job the original Chinese glue could not. That's some high end black silicone automobile gasket covering the seam, very pedestrian of me, I know. Caution: image shows repair of clothing.

Dearest #Costco, I'm seeing other food providers. I won't do a paper check by snailmail to a street address anymore. Carding me before checkout to see if it's really me breaks my heart. Shopping cart stop and frisk has lost its thrill. Maybe some decade you'll join any server on Mastodon and see this message, but I'm moving on. See you around, if you're on Discord. Sniff.