Things That Piss Me Off

I hate Home Plus, I hate E-Mart, I hate department stores, I hate shopping centres, I hate crowds, I hate stupid old women in department stores and crowds and I hate stupid young people that park in disabled parking spaces. I went to home plus yesterday to buy bacon and there was a selection of two. A 100g package for $5 and a 400g package for $8, both with a used by date 6 days hence. I can’t believe that I am writing this but I stood there for about 5 minutes swapping packages. I don’t want 400g and I won’t eat it in 6 days, but I can’t justify buying 100g because of the comparative expense. But I should just buy the 100g because I will throw it out anyway, so save the $3. But I could buy the 400g and give some to my mates so it didn’t get thrown out. (Here’s where I get paranoid). But that’s what they want me to do, they want me to buy the bigger package and they price up the smaller one to make it unjustifiable. At the risk of sounding like a whacko conspiracy theorist I will attempt to justify that comment. I used to work for woolworths (major supermarket chain in Australia) and as obvious as it sounds, getting people to leave more money behind in the store is the aim of the game. That is to say, for example when I worked for shell oil we would sell petrol at a loss of half or even 1 cent per litre just to get them in the store. Hopefully when they were there they would buy a can of coke, which is marked up 150% and if they bought less than 300 litres of petrol the station would make a profit. Convenience stores and petrol stations work on the principal that one product is (very) profitable, another is there to get customers in the door, even at a (minor) loss. Normally (certainly the ones I have worked for) big supermarket and department store chains work on a different system, they mark up as a percentage of the dollar spent. Regardless of what you buy, in general terms, if you spend $5 they make X profit. If you spend $25 they make 5X profit. If you spend $50 they make 10X and so on. Two things shit me off. One is that supermarkets are very good at what they do. If I walk into a petrol station of any type I can buy the petrol and a newspaper, see that coke is $2.20 for a 375ml can and not buy it. I cannot walk into a supermarket and walk out without spending $50. I can’t do it. This is my own fault. The other is thing that pisses me off is that having worked in both environments I am aware of the way they work, and I still can’t do it in the supermarkets. I spend, on average, a days wages every time I enter one of the fecking things, and it fucks me off. I have made a decision and I am sticking to it. I am not going into a supermarket or department store ever again. I am going to shop for food at the markets, buy wine from a wine store, buy my clothes in a clothing store and so on and so on. This fits in very well with my “support the ‘mom and pop’ store” theory that I have been putting into practice for the better part of 6 or 7 years. The difference is now it is a firm rule.And please allow me to reitterate, i fucking hate able young people who park in disabled car parks to save themselves a 20 metre walk and i doubly hate them when they do it because it is raining and only the disabled parks are undercover. WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU THINKING!!!! IT WOULD TAKE YOU 10 SECONDS TO RUN THAT. NOW SOME DODGEY OLD GRANDMA WILL BE SOAKING WET IN THE MINUTE OR SO IT WILL TAKE HER!!!aaaarrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhh! (yes, it was also the very last disabled park available)
this is me not in a department store