Graze Expectations
I was wheeling a shopping cart through the vast retail cavern known as Costco (241 East Linwood) when I ran into a friend who was wandering aimlessly around, eating bite-sized strips of teriyaki-flavored beef jerky. “Are you shopping,” I asked him, “or cruising?”
“Neither,” he answered, “I’m here for my afternoon snack.”
He confessed that whenever he’s hungry and bored, he wanders the wholesale warehouse just nibbling on each day’s free samples. “Sometimes I’ll buy something, and some days I’ll just eat and run.”
I was only half-amused, because I’m guilty of grabbing the occasional free lunch at Costco myself — if I need to do some household shopping during my lunch hour. Unlike my cheapskate friend, I typically buy stuff after I chomp down on a few snacks.
I once bought an entire box of frozen veggie burgers, based on my sampled wedge of a cooked one on a bun, dripping with melted cheese. A year later, that box is still hogging space in my freezer, probably never to be opened by me. After all, veggie burgers are good only when someone else makes them.
So I rarely buy the stuff that the sample vendors are pushing, like the Betty Crocker Madagascar Jungle Fruit Craze snacks — even if I did sneak not one but two plastic cups filled with gummy fruit-flavored elephants, parrots, zebras and monkeys.
“It’s full of healthy vitamins and minerals,” said the little lady wearing the safety haircap as she tidily filled more cups with the sweets. But her sales patter was wasted on me. I wouldn’t dream of buying that product. I mean, a free sample is enticing only because it’s free.
One day I did dash into Costco and pay for an incredibly cheap lunch at the snack bar: a giant slice of greasy pepperoni pizza, a hot dog and a glass of lemonade for $3.82. But then I thought since I was there, I’d do a bit of shopping. Before I knew it, I was back in Free Sample Land, where I greedily pounced on a cracker topped with crabmeat dip and, a few steps away, a slice of mild blue cheese perched on an even bigger wheat cracker. Then I finished off a little cup of microwaved frozen vegetables, two miniature quiches, a chicken-and-cheese taquito, a “Dino Buddy” chicken patty molded into a dinosaur shape and a tiny cup of Cal-C drink (mango-peach flavor).
Life is too short, I guess, to pass up the free buffet.
