Sad fish

My local Hy-Vee probably thinks I'm a major whiner because I complained about 3 different things on my bill tonight and I was refunded for 2 of them - to the tune of nearly $20.

It started with the peaches. I bought roughly 3 pounds of California white peaches on sale for $1.58. The checker asked me what they were and I told her. She must have misheard me because she rang them up as California ripe peaches instead, which were $2.48 per pound. I caught the error just as she finished charging my credit card. She sent me over to Customer Service, who refunded the entire price and let me have the peaches for free. Cool! Customer happiness = restored.

Then I came home and unloaded my groceries. My milk had leaked all over the bag. The cap wasn't on tightly. I thought if milk could get out then bacteria could probably get in. Ew! Still, I recalled the free peaches and decided not to complain about the milk. It was only a half gallon and it was on sale for 99 cents. I wasn't out that much.

Next I unwrapped the fresh salmon. I noticed it seemed a bit slimy and smelled strange. Eh, probably just normal fishy moisture. I seasoned it and threw it in a pan, but as it cooked I became more and more paranoid - for good reason. Cooking only made the smell worse. I tasted a little bit. Blech! Bad fish! I thought again about the free peaches. No, $7 in peaches could not make up for $11 in disappointing fish.

I bundled it up in the butcher paper and went back to the store. As long as I was going back anyway I decided to exchange the milk too. The look on that poor Customer Service guy's face was priceless. He actually unwrapped the fish and took a whiff. Why?! Did you not believe me when I said it was bad? I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing at him. I got my money back! Customer confidence = shaken but happiness = mostly restored. I'll just have to be careful about inspecting my salmon in the future.

Incidentally, I had a similar experience once when I bought crab legs at Price Chopper which led to the creation of my shellfish cardinal rule: Always ask the butcher to get the frozen stock from the back. I tell him I'm going to go home and freeze it again - and that's not a lie, I usually do throw it in the freezer - but the real reason is because I don't know how long their thawed crab legs have been sitting in the display case.