Lucky day

When I first moved to Long Beach in 1994, I stayed with my daughter and her beau on Redondo Avenue at Pacific Coast Highway. Below 7th Street was a Lucky's grocery store. Albertsons bought Lucky's. For a while prices were still lower than at Vons or Ralphs. Not anymore.

The walk to Albertsons is a bit longer than to Ralphs; because prices are about the same, milk higher at Albertsons, I generally shop at Ralphs. Walking to beach or home, I often stop at Albertsons to pick up some groceries, but not milk.

Albertsons has an annoying game. Need to break off ends of small game pieces, unwrap, usually a coupon of "chance to win Summer Sweepstakes" (enter online, give us your e-mail address so we can spam it) and 4 even smaller game pieces, that need separating. Those pieces get pasted in a larger fold-out sheet of glossy paper. Must lick to stick them according to game piece number ~ which I need to use magnifying glass to read.

Last time I was at Albertsons, I had to ask cashier "Do I get a game piece?" She had asked the two customers checked out before me. Yes, she said, handing me one. I do believe that is the game piece with an Instant Win coupon ~ $2.00! My lucky day, eh. I often wonder why the cashiers dole out those game pieces, according to amount of money spent. I guess it makes sense to only allow one per customer who just stopped by to get a bag of potato chips and many pieces to customer with large grocery order. Yet so often I left the store without a game piece, because cashier did not ask, "Are you playing the game?"

Many customers checking out ahead of me, declined their game pieces. One man handed me his ~ sounded too complicated to him, plus he was from Los Angeles.

I wonder about the cost of the promotion; how many prizes will actually be awarded. I would prefer that money be used to lower prices. Perhaps there are people who like spending all the time it takes to play it and the game increases sales. I am not one of them, but do appreciate the couple of bucks.
8/19/2012