To Pay Or Not To Pay

In Boston earlier this week, my family and I visited a quaint neighborhood cafe called Dunkin. Seems to be popular among locals. We ordered three donuts, an iced coffee, and a bagel. Then, I asked for a cup of water. The guy working at Dunkin replied that his manager said that he needs to charge for water. When I asked how much it would cost, he said $1 plus tax. I then asked about the price of a bottled water which was $2.85. Reluctantly, I paid for the tap water in an enormous cup.

About a minute later, a woman who had already ordered coffee and was holding a small dog in her arm (why was there a non-service dog in Dunkin?) asked a different employee for a cup of water when she received her beverage. The customer added that it was for her dog. The female employee handed the customer a small cup of water for no change. I immediately made sure to mention to the male employee who took my order that she didn’t get charged for water. He didn’t respond, and I really didn’t want to fight over $1. I feel like I was right in this situation, but what would have been the successful outcome? The store demanding $1 from the other customer? Or putting $1 back on my credit card? It wasn’t worth it. In my head though, I was thinking "I have not yet begun to fight," even though I probably would have been as successful as the black knight.

Maybe a little karma though for dog woman and the employee who gave her the free water. Dog woman spilled some of her water because of course she did. She was holding the dog and two drinks! Although she made a passing attempt at drying the water with napkins, the floor was still wet when she left the restaurant. Therefore, the female employee then had to get a mop out for the rest.

There’s no moral of the story here. I mean maybe don’t try to carry a dog and two cups at the same time. Or maybe charge nothing at all or a nominal fee like 25 cents for a cup of water for all customers. 

Father's Day Message

Pedro Tulo's preschool class created a Mad Libs type of Fathers Day card. Here is what my 4 year old gave me on Sunday:

Ah, to be 28 again where I could sleep in on weekend mornings! I'm also not sure that I'm as tall as a foot unless it's the foot that went into the shoe where the old woman lived.

I understand that my job isn't the easiest to explain, but playing bad girl games is not part of my job description, even under the other duties as assigned category. With that written, if you know of any bad girl games, please send them along as perhaps I could use them for a staff development or teamwork activity.

My favorite part of this is the play with a saw and cut answer. I don't think Pedro Tulo has ever seen me use a saw, and I definitely would not let him use one himself. Does he think we're lumberjacks?

Oh, for future reference, my hair is not blue and pasta is fine though not quite a personal favorite.

I hope you had a nice Fathers Day!

Photo from Idlewild Park via TripAdvisor.

New Dad Take Two

You may have noticed that I haven't written much recently. I also haven't shaved in a week (or kept up with personal hygiene in general), slept as much as I would like (though I did manage to sleep through most of the first two Penguins playoff games) or have had much interaction with the outside world. I have a really good reason though. My second child arrived! Here are some observations about the experience. Enjoy!

- There is an added degree of difficulty when preparing to go to the hospital to give birth when you have a 3 year-old at home. We wanted to give our son a bath and put on his pajamas before we went to the hospital, but my son didn't feel the urgency of the situation. Sure, going potty hadn't been a priority for him, but yes, tell us that you want to use the toilet as my wife is having contractions. I gave him two minutes on the potty. When he didn't go in those two minutes, I immediately put him in the bathtub where he promptly urinated in the bathtub.

- Although I packed a bag for the hospital, I managed to forget several key items including deodorant. Conversely, the one item I managed to grab before we left was a bag of Rold Gold pretzels. Brilliant move as I had a rushed dinner and the hospital cafeteria was closed when I was hungry in the middle of the night. Therefore, I'd like to thank Rold Gold and propose a new slogan for their brand. "Rold Gold: The snack you want when you're waiting for your wife to give birth."

- 22 year-old me would have been excited by the amount of texts I received around 2:30 AM. Of course, 22 year-old me didn't have have a cell phone. (Plus, I'm not sure texting was even around back.)

- Nurses regularly asked the pain level on a scale between 0 to 10. One of the nurses explained that 10 would be like getting your arm cut off. Why use that as your pain threshold? How many people have had their arms cut off? Besides, it didn't seem that bad in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.



- Although there was some initial concern about my son not crying much, he has certainly proved that he can scream extremely loudly. For example, I have no idea how my 3 year-old slept through my newborn's Exorcist-like screams the other night. Of course, the oldest son managed to wake up (and wake me up) at 4:30 even though it was quiet and everyone was asleep.

- I ended up wearing the exact same clothing including shoes from 7:00 AM Wednesday through 4:30 PM Thursday.

- While I'm not going to share my child's name here, I thought I would tell you his Hebrew name: Pedro Tulowitzki after two members of my rotisserie/fantasy baseball team. Those are both Old Testament names, right?

- Is there a doctor out there named Billy Rubin that specifically works with patients with jaundice? Seems like type-casting.

- The hospital encouraged us to watch a video where they prominently showed women's breasts. Encouraged us! I think this might be illegal in some states.

- When I watched Grey's Anatomy in the early years, it seemed like medical staff hooked up nearly everywhere in the hospital. However, I don't think there were any scenes of doctors, nurses or interns getting together on a sleeper chair.

- Yes, that's a nice way of writing that I hope that I never have to "sleep" on Hill-Rom sleeper chair again.

- The company that makes hospital receiving blankets must be super-rich. They have a monopoly on the market.

- Is there a class in medical or nursing school where you learn how to easily and properly swaddle infants? I feel like that's a requirement for graduation.

I'm sure that I'll share more stories soon about being a dad again, but first, I need some sleep.

The "Does Wegmans Rule" Experiment Results?

Now that the "Does Wegmans Rule" experiment is complete, we (lacochran & I) thought it would be nice to share the results. For those of you new to this challenge, we asked for volunteers (here and here) to take a checklist to their local grocery store and price the following items:

- 1 dozen large eggs
- 1/2 gallon Bryers vanilla
- 1 pound of bananas
- 1 head of romaine lettuce
- 1 box of San Georgio Spaghetti
- 1 1000 sheet roll of Scott toilet tissue
- 1 cup of Dannon Light ‘N Fit yogurt
- 1 12oz. can of Spam luncheon meat

We figured that this would give a wide variety of products that are commonly used. Well, except for Spam because Spam is funny and makes us think of Monty Python.

Our gracious volunteers visited these stores:

- Wegmans in Fairfax, VA
- Harris Teeter – Herndon, VA
- Shopper’s – Alexandria, VA
- Greenbelt Co-op – Greenbelt, MD
- Giant – Alexandria, VA
- Giant – Reston, VA
- Safeway – Fairfax, VA
- Kroger – Atlanta, GA
- Publix – Atlanta, GA

On to the results. We prepared an elaborate spreadsheet and a 20-page PowerPoint presentation to share, but we couldn’t quite figure out how to post it here. Maybe we’ll publish it as part of our dissertation: Sean Learns the Difference Between Iceberg and Romaine Lettuce. Back to the premise of our experiment, does Wegmans rule? The answer is yes. We took the total of the eight items at the DC area stores, and with a total of $12.93, Wegmans had the cheapest prices. Shopper’s finished in second at $13.25 and the Greenbelt Co-op earned the bronze with $13.34. Safeway was the most expensive at $18.09, although we think that the toilet paper priced was possibly a 4-pack and not an individual roll. (If one roll is really $3.35, we’re never going there again.) Even adjusting the price of toilet paper to $1, the total of $15.60 was about $1.35 more than the next most expensive store (Harris Teeter - $14.16, note: they did not sell individual rolls of Scott toilet tissue at Harris Teeter so we plugged in an assumption of $1 for comparison purposes).

What about Atlanta you ask? We say it is a city in Georgia . Oh, you’re wondering about the prices. Both Krogers and Publix do not carry 1000 sheet rolls of Scott toilet tissue or boxes of San Georgio spaghetti; however, if we add average price of each to the total, Kroger would actually be the cheapest at $12.29, largely due to Breyers ice cream being on sale (only $2.27). Kroger does have the most expensive eggs at $2.29 but Spam is apparently cheaper in the South ($2.29 – Kroger; $2.09 – Publix; between $2.49 [Wegmans] and $3.35 [Safeway] in the DC area).

In case you were wondering, the prices at Giant in Reston and Alexandria were exactly the same.

We were hoping people would document hilarious anecdotes about their secret shopper expeditions but by in large... not so much. Apparently, this is pretty serious stuff. So, we release you from your official obligations as secret shoppers and invite you to create a clean up on aisle 3 incident of your choosing.

So that’s about it. Thanks again to everyone who participated, to DC Blogs for linking to us and to Swapping Tales (aka The Abbot aka abbotofunreason) who created the incredibly cool badge.

A special thank you to lacochran for not laughing (at least that I know of) at the original idea of the "Does Wegmans Rule" Experiment and for truly organizing most of the challenge!