Michigan Is A Pricing State

I've had some issues with green Wal-Mart stickers since I've moved to Michigan. Add to that the addition of white Wal-Mart stickers which I've not been privy to before moving here. Then I found stickers on items at Target, and the grocery stores...there is no end to the craziness.

Of course I couldn't let well enough alone. The other day I was at Wal-Mart ~ the one closest to the house we will soon be living in. It happens to be a Supercenter. Hubby and I were there without the children, and we were next in line. I told him, "I'm going to ask." He said, "I'm waiting for you outside." I said, "No, you're not. I won't embarrass you."

See, we'd had long conversations, mostly one-sided on my part, about how I was going to have to check this whole thing out. It had to be a conspiracy or something. The Nancy Drew in me was on the case! Because why had I lived in all these other states for over ten years with no green Wal-Mart stickers? States I visit don't have green Wal-Mart stickers. What was the deal? And when I spoke those few words to Hubby, he knew exactly what I meant I was going to do.

So we get to the cashier lady, she's scanning and bagging our items, and I ask her why they have green stickers on everything. I completely ignore the fact that some things have white stickers so as not to confuse the issue. Her comment? "Doesn't every Wal-Mart?" "Not outside of Michigan for over the past ten years." She's rather shocked. She obviously realized that I had come from some parallel universe. No satisfaction guaranteed at that Wal-Mart.

(Oh, and did you know Canada Wal-Marts still have layaway? I know that since we drove through and went in one on the way home from Niagara Falls recently. I had to ask, of course. The girl told me they are trying to get rid of it. She was surprised that we already didn't have it in the U.S. Wal-Marts anymore.)

A few days later I'm at the piddly Wal-Mart close to the apartment we are living in until the house is completed. I call it piddly because it's the kind with a few aisles of food right up by the check-out lines. And they don't have two-gallon Ziploc bags. Who doesn't have those? Well, other than the Target down the road where I had to go next to try and find them. The little bitty commissary at Selfridge has them, but Wal-Mart and Target don't. Go figure.

Okay, back to piddly Wal-Mart. I'm in the electronics department and I have to check out back there because I have something that came from one of the cases. Cashier girl back there is very nice and we're talking, and then I think, "I'm gonna ask her." So I did. That was the right thing to do! She tells me that they have to put stickers on everything because Michigan is a pricing state, and if they have more than a certain percentage of items without stickers when they get audited, they get hefty fines. She goes on to further tell me that even though items come in to electronics pre-priced, they have to put their own sticker on anyway.

But here was the kicker...the white stickers are supposed to be used for produce items and things that are in the cold cases. The white stickers are stickier. I told nice cashier girl that that must have been why I had such a stinkin' hard time getting the residue off the side of the glass storage container I bought a week ago with the white sticker on it.

All that said, somebody needs to train somebody better, and here's the evidence, the first one from a few weeks ago, and the last two from the day I learned all about the stickers from nice cashier girl:



I also learned something else if you can believe it. Because of this law, it is the cashiers' responsibility to catch any discrepancies between the sticker prices and what is scanned. So if the scanned price rings up higher than the sticker price and the cashier doesn't catch it, and you don't tell the cashier, you can go to customer service (always an exciting option) and get the difference back plus $5.00. Now customer service is not usually my cup of tea unless I absolutely have to go there, but next time something rings up wrong, I'm not alerting the cashier, because I just want to check this out myself. If the kids aren't with me, it's a Starbucks venti White Chocolate Mocha, and if they are, I can bribe them all with a cone at McDonald's for standing through any customer service line.

At least reading my blog will provide you will lots of useless trivia you will probably never need to know.

And all because Michigan is a pricing state.