They’re running a promotion at the grocery store by my house. Customers get these little game cards with every purchase, and you peel them open and – surprise! “Try Again”.
Then the garbage bins outside the store get filled with all these little pieces of cardboard until they are completely overflowing, and the ground is littered with “maybe next time” messages.
It’s a useless waste of resources, I know, but I still take the cards – they just hand them to you with the receipt. It’s just paper afterall. Then I peeled one open and . . . . . “WINNER!”
Lo and behold, I have won a card case.
“What is that?”, you may be pondering. I looked it up on the company website. It is exactly what it sounds like as it turns out: I have won a little leather case for keeping my personal deck of playing cards in.
And to think I have been living all this time without one of these! How did I keep my vulnerable cards intact and safe? How did I (cue cymbal crash) ensure I was playing with a full deck? How did I possibly get by?
So that is when I realized that I don’t need to take the little game cards at the grocery store. I don’t need them, and they aren’t the reason I shop there. The reason I shop there is that it is conveniently beside my skytrain stop (I’ve given up cycling until the weather snaps out of it and the sun comes out), and it’s the closest true grocery store to my house by about 3 blocks.
It’s a big, chain grocery store. I don’t do my main shopping there because it doesn’t carry milk in glass bottles or package-free tofu, but it does have a deli and is clean and well stocked. The staff are friendly and the aisles wide, and they write the price per 100 grams or per mL right on the shelf tag, making it easy to compare products for value.
I will still keep shopping at my local chain grocery store. I will not, however, be cashing in my winning voucher. I will stand on my soapbox of anti-consumerism and simply recycle it.
I am willing to forgo the chance at winning a car or a TV for the greater good of rejecting useless consumerism (even when it is seemingly free). Of course, if I had won a car it might have been a different story . . . .
The Clean Bin Project Blog 
😀 oh my; this made me laugh. I love how these epiphanies creep up on us and we start to see things for what they are – ways to make us buy, buy., buy.
Loved the cymbal crash 😀 It was very dramatic……
I’m glad you showed a picture of what the card case prize was. I didn’t know I needed one until I saw what I was missing. 😉
Like Christine, I didn’t know that I needed a card case…….and all this time I’ve just been using a rubber band. What the neighbors must think of me?
Jen, how would you have classified that item if you had succumbed to the lure and acquired it? Is that a gift or a purchase? Either way, you’re better off.
We are sharing your cold weather down here in Washington. Brrrr!