Stuff on Sale

Have you ever wondered why stuff goes on sale?

I never gave it too much thought, except that sometimes things go on sale when they've been sitting on the shelf too long. Or, perhaps, the store that we're shopping at wants to be nice to us (to entice us to come back of course).

I recently made a couple of purchases of items that were on sale. Neither of these items would spend too much time on the shelf, so that is not why they were on sale.

Not too far back I bought a whole bunch of soap on sale. When I used it, I noticed that it didn't lather up quite as well. I blamed it on the wash cloth, which was wearing out. But the soap ran out eventually, and I had to buy new soap. When I started using the new stuff, I noticed that it lathered up better than the previous four bars.

More recently, strawberry jam was on sale, so I bought two jars instead of just one. I noticed that the jam seemed runnier and had less fruit than before. I chalked it up to the fact that, around the same time as the jam purchase, I decided to store my jam in the cupboard rather than the fridge and that the change was due to the warmer temperature of the jam. As with the soap, that jam got used up, and I purchased some jam that was regular priced. Sure enough, as I'm sure you've guessed by now, the jam was not as runny and had more fruit.

So in two cases, I bought something on sale, and in both cases what I bought on sale was of lower quality than the same regular priced items before and after they were on sale.

Coincidence?