Wednesday

Brief tonight. 2 and I are meeting shortly to go to the Augie game.

I experienced an incident coming back to the office this afternoon after a meeting on the Illinois side that is a good lesson in economics. I knew we were out of Coke at the office and I needed a little pick-me-up to finish out the day. So I stop at the Bettendorf equivalent of the Seven-Eleven at the foot of the I-74 bridge. A 20 ounce plastic bottle of Coke in the cooler/case was shown as costing $1.49. Which I thought was outrageous considering a 12 ounce can in a machine usually goes for $0.50. And a 12 pack of 12 ounce cans in the grocery store might be $4 including deposit.

But I needed the pick-me-up and I went into the store knowing that I was going to pay a premium for convenience shopping. So I go to the cashier and she swipes the bottle over the bar code reader and it pops up as $1.69 plus tax! The cashier kind of groused at my suggestion that the reader was wrong, and actually went over to the case to see the displayed price, and, a bit reluctantly, re-rang up my purchase at the lower price. Now, if I was buying gas, a candy bar and a small bag of chips, that extra 20 cents might never have been noticed in the total. Any bets that there was a conscious decision made in the store to display lower unit prices than those actually programmed into the system?

I have some other comments on pricing to consumers in different situations, but I am out of time. I'll add those observations another time.

A gossip colmnist somewhere in California is hinting that Lance and Cheryl are back at it. Anyone notice that her Super Bowl commercial rated dead last?

Duke-UNC tonight too.

Be careful out there.