stevenpiziks (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stevenpiziks) wrote2020-11-18 10:16 pm
stevenpiziks) wrote2020-11-18 10:16 pm
Big-Ass Free Turkey
My family agreed--we're only doing in-house Thanksgivings this year because of the pandemic. So I'm making turkey and fixin's for five instead of twenty.
Also this week, the Michigan governor announced we're going into semi-lockdown, starting on Thursday.
I realized I needed to do the Thanksgiving shopping. I also realized the store would be mobbed with pandemic panic shoppers. Darwin said I should just continue my usual practice--make out an online list and have the store get the order ready for me to pick up. I don't usually like doing this for holiday dinner shopping because when I'm at the store, I usually remember something I didn't put on the list. But I did the online thing anyway in this case.
On the list was a turkey. I asked for one weighing 10-14 pounds. A couple hours before the order was ready, the store texted me to say they had no 10-14 pound turkeys. I read an article a while ago that said turkey farmers started this year's batch of turkeys back in the early days of the pandemic, when no one was predicting we'd do reduced Thanksgivings. They hatched lots of big turkeys and few small turkeys, the exact opposite of the eventual demand. Oops. I suspect this is why the store didn't have any littler ones.
"Will you accept a 15-20 pound turkey for the price of a 10-14 pound turkey?" they asked.
I replied that I would. I wasn't as thrilled as you might expect with the idea of getting twice the turkey for the same price, but I wasn't quite. What are five people going to do with all that turkey?? First-world problems, I suppose.
Darwin went to pick up the groceries this evening while I was in my writers group Zoom meeting. He got back just as we were finishing up. Once everything was hauled upstairs, I glanced at the bags.
"Where's the turkey?" I asked.
"It's not in there?" he said.
"How you could you not notice carrying up a 20-pound turkey?" I countered.
The turkey definitely wasn't there. We checked the receipt. The turkey was mentioned in the space for substitutions, but instead of listing the price difference, it only said REVIEW. What the heck did that mean? That the clerk was supposed to review the order with Darwin? That the order was supposed to be confirmed?
Additionally, I'd ordered butter. It was missing, too.
So I called the store. "We seem to be missing part of our order," I said. "A box of butter. And a turkey."
The clerk rummaged around and came back to the phone. "I think we have it here. Do you want to come back and get it tonight?"
Why not? So Darwin and I drove back to the store, where a bemused clerk brought out the turkey.
"How did I miss an entire turkey?" she asked.
"We wondered the same thing," I agreed. We were actually more eye-roll-y than snarky. There's a pandemic on, you know.
We got the thing back home and hauled it upstairs, where I checked the weight.
Twenty freaking pounds. Forty dollars.
Then I had a thought. The store no longer gives you an itemized receipt with your order, something that annoys both Darwin and me, since this practice makes it harder to verify what you ordered vs. what you got. But I could check the TOTAL they charged us with the bank. The total was more than $20 under the store's original estimate.
So we apparently got a big-ass free turkey.
Also this week, the Michigan governor announced we're going into semi-lockdown, starting on Thursday.
I realized I needed to do the Thanksgiving shopping. I also realized the store would be mobbed with pandemic panic shoppers. Darwin said I should just continue my usual practice--make out an online list and have the store get the order ready for me to pick up. I don't usually like doing this for holiday dinner shopping because when I'm at the store, I usually remember something I didn't put on the list. But I did the online thing anyway in this case.
On the list was a turkey. I asked for one weighing 10-14 pounds. A couple hours before the order was ready, the store texted me to say they had no 10-14 pound turkeys. I read an article a while ago that said turkey farmers started this year's batch of turkeys back in the early days of the pandemic, when no one was predicting we'd do reduced Thanksgivings. They hatched lots of big turkeys and few small turkeys, the exact opposite of the eventual demand. Oops. I suspect this is why the store didn't have any littler ones.
"Will you accept a 15-20 pound turkey for the price of a 10-14 pound turkey?" they asked.
I replied that I would. I wasn't as thrilled as you might expect with the idea of getting twice the turkey for the same price, but I wasn't quite. What are five people going to do with all that turkey?? First-world problems, I suppose.
Darwin went to pick up the groceries this evening while I was in my writers group Zoom meeting. He got back just as we were finishing up. Once everything was hauled upstairs, I glanced at the bags.
"Where's the turkey?" I asked.
"It's not in there?" he said.
"How you could you not notice carrying up a 20-pound turkey?" I countered.
The turkey definitely wasn't there. We checked the receipt. The turkey was mentioned in the space for substitutions, but instead of listing the price difference, it only said REVIEW. What the heck did that mean? That the clerk was supposed to review the order with Darwin? That the order was supposed to be confirmed?
Additionally, I'd ordered butter. It was missing, too.
So I called the store. "We seem to be missing part of our order," I said. "A box of butter. And a turkey."
The clerk rummaged around and came back to the phone. "I think we have it here. Do you want to come back and get it tonight?"
Why not? So Darwin and I drove back to the store, where a bemused clerk brought out the turkey.
"How did I miss an entire turkey?" she asked.
"We wondered the same thing," I agreed. We were actually more eye-roll-y than snarky. There's a pandemic on, you know.
We got the thing back home and hauled it upstairs, where I checked the weight.
Twenty freaking pounds. Forty dollars.
Then I had a thought. The store no longer gives you an itemized receipt with your order, something that annoys both Darwin and me, since this practice makes it harder to verify what you ordered vs. what you got. But I could check the TOTAL they charged us with the bank. The total was more than $20 under the store's original estimate.
So we apparently got a big-ass free turkey.