Monday, August 4, 2008

Speaking Up

I was at the local shopping center today to get a few things for dinner. I had my heart set on grilled salmon.

My heart was set so that even the price of QFC's wild caught King Salmon did not deter me. It made me pause and consider that I could serve Hamburger Helper every night for two weeks for the same price, but it ultimately did not deter me.

I swallowed, gathered my courage and asked for two pounds of King Salmon. Luckily, the slab that was in front, that I thought would probably feed our family, was 1.73 pounds and I quickly told the meat and seafood guy it would be just perfect.

I noticed the read-out on the scale said the salmon was $6.99 a pound. Was there some extra sale I was not aware of? At this point, I might as well tell you that the salmon was on sale at $14.99 a pound. The original price...$22.99 a pound!

He handed me my wrapped up slab of king salmon and I checked the sticker and it said I'd bought just over $12 worth of salmon. Well, I was thrilled, but a bit curious.

"I have a question," I said. "Is there a special sale going on that isn't advertised, because I thought the salmon was $14.99 a pound?"

The meat and seafood guy checked the sticker, then checked the little price thing under the glass and said, "Oh, wow! You are right."

At this point I was feeling honest, but incredibly stupid. In fact, "stupid" had just beat "honest" in a horribly mismatched arm-wrestling contest.

You would think this guy could have cut me a break for speaking up and given me the salmon for the lower price. It was his mistake after all. Maybe he could have offered to split the difference? At the very least he could have praised my honesty and acted like he'd never met anyone who would do such a noble thing. It would have made me feel a little better.

All he said was, "You probably would have felt guilty after you left here if you didn't say anything."

(Jerk!)

On the way back to the car, I passed the tanning salon. (Why those places are still in business I do not know. Do the people who walk in and out of there not ever read or watch the news?)

There was a sign in front of the tanning salon that read, "Please bare with us during our renovation. We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you, but hope that the upgrades we are making will help us serve you better."

"Bare?" As in "take your clothes off?"

It had to be a mistake, even though it was kind of a funny one, for a tanning salon. The rest of the message was so serious that I was sure they meant "bear" instead of "bare."

I was still stewing over the $25.63 worth of salmon I was carrying that I felt just snotty enough to go in and give them a vocabulary lesson. This was some "speaking-up" I could get right.

I told myself I deserved to feel a little smug. I realized that the tanning employees would probably make fun of me after I left and say I was a geek for pointing out their vocabulary gaffe (but they wouldn't know what the word "gaffe" meant.)

I was so close to going in. I peered inside the front window and saw 2 people standing at the front desk chatting and laughing with the receptionist.

I chickened out.

The moral of the story is: Just have Hamburger Helper.

(This better be the best salmon dinner ever!)

7 comments:

Melissa said...

How did your dinner turn out?

I was in line behind a lady one day who was buying beef kebabs. They didn't have a price on them, so the guy said something to the effect of, "How about $1.99?" I almost died because I knew they were way more than that....I wished I was buying some! The lady made a fuss and said she wanted to know THE REAL PRICE. When they came back and told her $8.99, she said, "I guess I should have kept my mouth shut!"

Did you finish Breaking Dawn? I'm only halfway done!

Betty Grace said...

I made that salmon we used to have in AK for a BBQ a couple of weeks ago. HUGE hit. It's worth the $$. But don't you miss just miss getting it fresh off the boat (or from our dad's when they get back?)

Emily said...

Oh my gosh, Afton, you make me laugh! I do agree that salmon rocks. Sucks to be honest sometimes. Shocking that the sale price was $15 a pound though. My husband's degree is in English, and it is a game to him to point out incorrect signs and advertising flyers...your not the only one who finds it humorous.

Afton said...

The dinner was excellent. Robert said it was delicious, but did mention that it wasn't the "best salmon" he'd ever had. But then he didn't know about the price. (that could have made a difference either way) I told him he needed to focus on the positive and didn't say anything else.

Emily, one of my favorite punctuation blunders to spot is the use of unneccessary quotation marks. There are some condo's for sale down the street that are "new" and I've wnated to take a picture of the sign and post it on my blog for a while.

There is a whole blog devoted to the mis-use of quote marks. It's fun to look through: http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/.

Heather said...

Hahaha--that is SO funny! I love your thoughts on the tanning place. But, I have to point out that in your comment to Emily, you don't need an apostrophe in the word "condos." :) Hehehehe.

Afton said...

I saw my errant apostrophe after I posted that comment and thought it was very lame of me to complain about bad punctuation and spelling, then make an error myself. Maybe I should submit myself to THIS blog which focuses on the abuse of apostrophes: http://u2019.blogspot.com/

Debbie said...

Afton you would DIE in Asia! Greg and I laugh ALL THE TIME about the funny translations, miss-spellings, acronyms and abbreviations. I'll forward a recent e-mail from greg to you about a particularly funny acronym! It's even better since Singapore's primary language is English!