Do not trust a tattooed, mumbling deli guy. That’s all I can say for myself.
It all started with potato salad. I was craving it and we have a cookout at Destiny Church tonight, which seemed like a pretty good excuse.
Now, my mom raised me to make stuff from scratch. Did she ever go to the Kroger Deli and buy potato salad? No.
But I just moved into my new house a month ago, and my kids started school today. And it’s Tuesday. Those all seemed like really good excuses to buy potato salad already made.
So I went to the store and asked the mumbly, tattooed deli guy how much a big thing of potato salad was. He said, “Mmrfh prbbly abt three.” Which I interpreted to mean, “Probably about $3.”
I was feeling particularly potato salad crave-ish and I assumed everyone else at the cookout would feel the same, so I told him I wanted two of the big containers. That should be about $6, right?
He was so kind, in a mumbly way, and said he could go in the back and get me some fresh and put it all in a larger container, rather than me have to carry around two containers. At least, that’s what I think he said.
Pretty soon, he came back with a nice bowl of potato salad, perfect for a cookout. It looked exactly like you would think two of the big containers in one bowl should look.
He placed it on the scale and gave me a scared look and said, “Sthat alright?” Which I think meant, “Is that alright?”
I don’t do good with numbers and there were lots of numbers on the scale, but I saw one set that started with a 7 and had two digits after it. And that seemed a little higher than $6.00, but who was I to quibble?
So I agreed. And I took the potato salad up to the self-check. It rang up as $32.00.
I stood at the self-check in shock for a while, trying to figure out what happened. Again, numbers aren’t my strong point. But from what I could ascertain, that 7 with two digits after it was how much the potato salad was per pound. And somehow, I had wound up with almost 5 pounds of potato salad.
I really didn’t want to pay $32 for potato salad that my mom could make or $3. But I didn’t know what to do. I had agreed to it, somehow. So I bought that potato salad. TheĀ most expensive potato salad of my life.
And the only thing running through my mind was, “Chris is going to kill me.” And then I thought, “Maybe he won’t notice.” But it’s totally blazoned on a sticker on the top of the container. So, since there was no hiding it, I figured I might as well blog about it.
All I can say is, I hope everyone really enjoys the potato salad tonight.