It pays to check your bill before you pay your bill

COVID brain struck in a big way this week. At least I can try to blame it on my recent bout with COVID rather than admit I’m careless and should have known better.

*I’m a huge fan of the Costco $1.50 lunch. That’s my idea of a deal and I love it, especially with a cup of frozen chocolate yogurt as a finale. Life is good.*

After more than two weeks of house arrest (quarantined with COVID) to keep me from infecting my fellow human beings, I finally tested negative and no longer had symptoms. That called for a get-out-of-jail trip to Sam’s Club to do some grocery shopping and enjoy a big celebration with their cheap $1.50 hot dog lunch. I’m easily entertained.

I took my time roaming the aisles, savouring the experience of being out in public again (still masked, of course). I was giddy with excitement as I roamed the store chatting with other shoppers and giving everything a thorough going over.

It’s been a while since my honey and I have been to a restaurant or enjoyed a nice lobster dinner, so I decided to splurge and pick up some frozen lobster tails to celebrate my return to society. The sign in the freezer said $15.98 which I thought was an amazing deal as they’re usually $25.00 each, so I grabbed a box and threw it into the cart.

I did think, however, that my bill in excess of $300.00 seemed a bit excessive for the number of items I had purchased. It’s not uncommon for me to spend that much at Sam’s Club or Costco though as I don’t go that often and when I do I load up.

I also learned something new that day. When I checked out with my cart of goodies, I noticed the lady ahead of me showing the clerk at the exit doors something on her phone and learned that I could have rung up my purchases on a Sam’s Club app as I was shopping. That would have saved scanning and re-carting my items at the self-checkout. Genuis. Must try that next time.

*Oops! Should have checked the price before I checked out.*

This morning I went to the freezer to take the lobster tails out for dinner tonight. I cut the plastic seal on the box and was shocked to find two dozen frozen lobster tails inside. That can’t be right, I thought, for $15.98? So I went and retrieved my checkout bill from the trash bin and was floored to discover I had paid $163.00 for the five-pound box of lobster tails! Holy shit! By then I had opened and handled them so there was no returning them.

Today’s lesson is that in future I must be more attentive to what I am being charged at checkout, at any and all stores. In the rush to get my items scanned and keep the line moving, I never bothered to check what I was actually paying for my purchases.

So, for the foreseeable future, my husband and I will be eating lobster salad, lobster omelettes, lobster sandwiches, grilled lobster, and boiled lobster as a regular part of our daily meal plans for the next several weeks.

Then, when it was time to serve our lobster dinner, my husband dropped the dish of melted garlic butter on the ceramic floor, which necessitated blotting up the butter and broken glass, washing the kitchen floor, washing his butter-stained clothes, and nuking the lobster and fresh garlic butter to reheat everything before we could sit down and enjoy it. This whole lobster dinner thing was not going well.

I think his literal slip-up cancels out mine though, don’t you? I recall the time he picked up a full loin of pork at the grocery store, that was about two feet long instead of the single pork tenderloin I asked him to get. That pork loin did us for twenty-six meals at a much better price than my lobster mishap. But, mine goes better with Pinot Grigio. And it was my mistake not his, so I tend to be more forgiving. Wouldn’t you be?