Outside The Box

You know, conditioning is a terrible thing! (And I don’t mean your hair.) You get so used to things always being a certain way that when things are done differently it completely throws you off.

When you go into grocery stores in France it is not unusual to find things packaged together. Just like in the states. You know, a four pack of yogurt, six packs of bottled water or pop, three packs of juice boxes, six packs of pudding etc. In France, however, it is also not unusual to see these things pulled open.

You know if someone, say, only wants to buy one pudding and two juices or just one can of pop. There is nothing wrong with it; it is perfectly acceptable to do this. Just pay for the number of items you want and not have to buy the whole package.

So it is not unusual that when I go to buy my stash of Pepsi, I have to dig behind a bunch of single cans to get to the six packs at the back of the shelf. Last week though, when I bought my stash, I couldn’t find any six packs and so I grabbed six individual cans, with much muttering and eye rolling of course, and bought them that way.

Today, when I went grocery shopping, again no six packs. So I begin to put my six cans in the cart when suddenly a brain wave strikes. Doh! What a fool! I can buy 8 cans, or 10! I could put 16 damn cans in my cart. Aside from the inconvenience of having to bag individual cans, I can buy as few or as many of them as I want! So I put 5 cans in my cart and then I went over and grabbed 2 cans of Sprite out of a full 6 pack box. Well then complete madness took over and I went over and grabbed 1 each of the vanilla, banana, raspberry and strawberry yogurts. Then I went and tore open a six pack of Evian water and bought 7 bottles!

Luckily the haze of madness cleared before I tore open a box of 12 fish sticks!