Sunday, August 26, 2007

The Downy Debacle

My friend Jenny wrote this on her blog.

I'm pretty sure I hadn't told her about my conversation regarding this subject last Friday.

First, I'll tell you the story I sent to my email buds last Friday about my visit to Harris Teeter:

"I stopped at Harris Teeter today to get a couple of quarts of chicken stock for this soup. I had the boxes in my hand and headed toward the checkout.

I aimed for what I thought was an open lane and ended up at one of those freakin' self-checkout things. As I was standing there, contemplating the origins of the universe and why the lane signs seemed to give an optical illusion as to their actual location, the helper chick came up.

"Do you need help?" She asked.

"Well, I intended to be over there, but now I'm over here," I said.

"No problem," she said. "I'll help you."

"Well, I KNOW how to do it, it's just that I'm not feeling like doing it myself," I said by way of apology.

"I do this all day," she assured me. "I'll do it."

And so she took my two boxes from me and proceeded to do all the work, reaching past me to punch the right buttons and I was secretly glad she was because, even though I know how to do it, it all seemed quite confusing and LOUD to me and I just stood there and kept mumbling that I was tired and sorry... tired, lazy and sorry. And she kept smiling and took my $20 bill and gave me change and gingerly handed me my bag."

What I did not tell my email buds was about the conversation I had with a fellow shopper in front of the fabric softener in Target about 20 minutes earlier that day.

"Hmm..." the lady said, to no one in particular.

"Too many choices, isn't it?" I said.

"Well, it's just that I'm looking for this specific stuff and it's getting harder and harder to find," she explained.

Then she proceeded to tell me about some miracle product that is like dryer sheets, but you put them in the wash and when the colors on your clothes run, this sheet traps the color so that it doesn't color all the other clothes.

And so we talked about how cool that was, and then I said,

"Well, I'm looking for what used to be a very popular item, but now I'm starting to worry that it's all gone."

"What?" she asked.

"Free & Sensitive Downy Fabric Softener," I said. "It's been the only brand of scent-free fabric softener that I could find at Target and now I'm not finding it here, either.

"Is this it?" she asked, handing me a bottle clearly marked "FREE & SENSITIVE."

"Yup. What a dope I am!"

She just smiled.

They have changed the labels. Really. It reminds me of when I used to buy Old Dutch Corn Tortilla Cchips and had to stop because I couldn't find it anymore. After a couple of months going chip-less, I found it with an entirely different bag.

Can't they at least WARN US?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I stared at cans of Van Camps beans for about 5 minutes before I realized that the reason I couldn't see that they were the right ones is because the label had some race car dude on the front of it. Vewwy fwustwating.