Cheese: The Totally Other Food Group...

this totally cracked me up, so i felt the need to share it with "ya'll." it was written by adrian ryan of the stranger on their slog.

I was grocery shopping at the Ballard Fred Meyer with a dear friend. (I don’t grocery shop personally; I just swoop down upon the screaming villagers.) And this friend? Well let’s get all in the open: she uses coupons. Coupons! By the fistful. She does it without blushing or regret, and I say God fucking bless her. The strength to use coupons is a courage I shall never possess.

Now, let us not quibble over facts: Cheese is a dairy product. Unless I have been grossly misinformed, it is pretty much THE dairy product. If we were playing Pictionary and the phrase was “dairy”, I’d draw a big triangular fucking piece of cheese (with some nice Swiss holes in it) and you’d scream “DAIRY!” and we’d win. That cheese is a dairy product and nothing else is the single universal governing principle upon which the entire universe revolves. Wee bitty children understand this. All else is madness.

But just you try telling that to Fred Meyer.

So my good friend had a coupon for, you guessed it, one dairy product. Simple! “Redeemable for one dairy purchase, retail value of $3” it said, and so she produced it to the checkout woman along with a perfectly reasonable package of cheese. Medium Cheddar, in lovely unwrapped slices, retail value $3.99. And the check-er-outer lady looked at it a while and said (without the slightest trace of irony),

“I don’t think cheese is a dairy product.”

Oh. Um. Well. Yes. Um. WHAT?

“No, they don’t consider cheese a dairy product.”

They? WHO precisely is this “they” that don’t "consider cheese a dairy product"!?

“Fred Meyer Corporation.”

Oh. Of course. Fred Meyer Corporation. Indeed. Who else?

You’re fucking joking, yes?

“No.”

And so my friend paid $3.99 for her cheese, and saved the coupon for another day and a real dairy product. Like light bulbs, or deodorant.

Cheese is not dairy! Fred Meyer has spoken!

knowing the good old slog, there should be some good responses to this. i'll be sure to keep you abreast if anything funny comes up.