A Sucker's Born Everyday....

So tonight, on a cold, dreary, and drizzly spring evening, I found myself sitting here at home, minding my own business, when suddenly I heard someone pounding at the door. I almost didn’t go to answer it, since people rarely knock on my door unless they’re trying to sell me something, but I didn’t imagine that could be the case on such a dreary night and so I assumed it had to be one of the neighbors. It wasn’t, and instead it was a guy in his mid-fifties peddling frozen steaks. I kind of grimaced when I realized what was going on, but sometimes the nice guy in me gets the better of me, and so I didn’t protest as he went into his spiel, talking about the quality of his steaks. He opened up all the boxes, set them out on the wet concrete and went into a full blown sales pitch. It was a terribly awkward moment where I couldn’t help feeling that the person in front of me was doing one of the most humbling things anyone could be doing—what a way to make a living.

I decided of course that I wasn’t interested, but how do you interrupt a guy in the middle of his performance? He drove a hard bargain, and just wouldn’t take no for an answer, and it was all so tragically pathetic as he stood there in the rain begging me to make a deal. The price was getting to a point where I actually began to consider what he was saying seriously, but the whole time I was trying to calculate the actual cost of the meat, and how much I would pay for this at Costco. I didn’t have a firm grasp on the actual poundage of the meat, but only had the number of steaks, and it came to about $2.50 per steak, which I thought really wasn’t that bad.

Standing on the stoop of my house, with this man practically begging me to buy his wares I found my resolve wasting away. I finally took the plunge, which I swore I wouldn’t have. I wrote out the check, grabbed the box and brought it inside and was going to go weigh the meat on my scale to see what the per pound price was actually. On the side of the box, however, was clearly labeled the pounds.

Let’s put it this way: I don’t think I’ve ever paid this much for beef in my life, ever. And what the heck was I thinking? Just last week I was on a kick to save every penny, and not buy any groceries. I'm kicking myself right now.

What the heck happened? As Dave Ramsey is wont of saying, I just paid some stupid tax today.

The one good thing: guaranteed low carb foods for a couple of months.